The capturing unit, 26 Battalion, was a Brisbane-based infantry unit that had previously done some hard yards at Gallipoli. Hence "Mephisto" being shipped to my home city.
My maternal grandfather was a member of 26th at Gallipoli, and stayed with the unit when it was shuffled off to the Western Front. It appears that he was in a military hospital when "Mephisto" was recovered.
When WW2 was cranking up, the battalion was re-raised as the 2/26th. Sadly, many of those poor buggers ended in Changi, as "house guests" of the Emperor, and subsequently doing a little "civil engineering" up near the Burmese border. Some of the survivors of that effort were then shipped to Japan very late in the war. Some didn't complete the voyage as the POW ships in the convoys were not specially marked, and the often unescorted transports were worked over fairly hard by US submarines.
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They had the old girl on display in a clear plastic "tent" at the model train show at Ipswich Railway Workshops late last year; made me laugh a little since she had sat out in the weather at the old Queensland museum site with just a shade shed over the top for many, many years prior, now gets treated as the valuable exhibit it really is!
I was in Australia in 1977 doing land warfare in Queensland. During my time off my machine gun teammate and I went to that very museum and saw this brute. At the time, I had no idea I was looking at a sole survivor. I remember no one seemed to mind us touching and I was actually able to look it over completely. The top is partly caved in as if a bomb or arty round struck her. The inside is huge, engine mounted centrally and a walkway around it. What it must have been like to work one of those in the first battles...
We had a collection of small arms in the Infantry School in NB Canada that I built for teaching SAIC instructors in '93 to '96...there were about 50 handguns and 100 long guns and I hear they disappeared. No one seems to know where...interesting how that happens...
From what I can gather from the latest issue of "Wartime" (the AWM magazine), Mephisto is now visiting Canberra on display at AWM. Do not know for how long.
Mephisto will be temporarily loaned by Queensland Museum to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra from June 2015 until April 2017.
While Mephisto is at AWM the tank will take centre stage in the Anzac Hall exhibition space.
This loan is a unique opportunity for Queensland Museum to share one of Queensland’s most significant Anzac stories with a national audience.
Upon its return in April 2017, Mephisto will go on permanent display in the new Queensland Remembers Gallery at the Queensland Museum which was announced as part of Queensland’s Anzac Centenary commemoration. The Queensland Remembers Gallery will open in late 2018 at the Queensland Museum and is proudly supported by the Queensland Government.