Groups and Single Decorations for Gallantry Provenance: Dix Noonan Webb, May 2016.


Anthony Drongin - actually Antanao Dronginis - was born at Wishaw, Lanarkshire in February 1915, the son of a Lithuanian miner, Leopolda Drongonis and his wife, Anna.


Enlisting in the Scots Guards in Glasgow in June 1935, Anthony witnessed active service in Palestine in 1936 and gained rapid advancement to Lance-Sergeant in the following year. By the outbreak of hostilities he was serving as an Instructor on the Regimental Depot Staff but in November 1940 he transferred to No. 8 Commando as a Company Sergeant-Major.


Re-designated 4 Special Service Battalion, the Commando embarked for the Middle East in February 1941, where it became part of ‘B’ Battalion of ‘Layforce’. On the force’s disbandment towards the end of the same year, Drongin was appointed a Staff Sergeant in the Military Provost Staff Corps. Having then rejoined the Scots Guards on 4 June 1942, he transferred to ‘L’ Detachment, S.A.S. on the 22nd, on which date - at his own request - he reverted to the rank of Corporal.


Thus his subsequent part in Operation “Bigamy” in September 1942, when ‘L’ Detachment was charged with capturing and holding Benghazi until a relieving force arrived by sea from Malta.


Operation “Bigamy”


Allocated to ‘X’ Force with 45 jeeps and 33 trucks, the S.A.S. men were divided into three patrols, namely an advance party under “Paddy” Mayne and two larger parties under David Stirling and Captain W. J. “Bill” Cumper (see DNW, 19 September 2003, Lot 1247). Drongin accompanied Stirling’s patrol.


Of subsequent events, as the attacking force reached the perimeter of Benghazi, Fitzroy MacLean takes up the story in Eastern Approaches:


‘For the first hour or two the country was familiar. We were following the route that Melot and I had taken to the edge of the escarpment. The maps were inaccurate and we found our way through a maze of wadis largely by the help of landmarks; a burnt-out German truck; a Mohammedan shrine; the unusual outline of a hilltop.


Clearly it was going to be no easy matter for a convoy the size of ours to negotiate the precipitous escarpment, especially as our choice of routes was limited by the latest enemy troop dispositions. Melot's Arab, who claimed to know a good way down, was brought up to the front of the column and used as a guide.


He turned out to be a very poor one. It was now quite dark. The track soon became increasingly precipitous and showed signs of petering out altogether. It was strewn, too, with immense boulders which grated ominously on the sumps of the trucks. After a good deal of whispered barracking from me in Italian, our guide finally agreed that we must be in the wrong wadi. The process of extracting the column from it, and searching for a new way down was long and painful.


Meanwhile the R.A.F. had been bombing Benghazi for some time. We could see the bombs bursting. By the time we reached the foot of the escarpment and started out across the coastal plain, the bombardment had stopped. The searchlights flicked round the sky once or twice more and then went out. The moon was down. We should not now reach Benghazi until well after the appointed hour. We seemed to have been on the way a long time. It was cold and the effects of the rum we had drunk before starting had long since worn off. We cursed the Arab roundly.


At last we reached the tarmac road and a few minutes later were nearing the outskirts of the town. It would not be long now before things began to happen. So far there had been no sign of the enemy.


We were almost on top of the road block before we saw it. This time there was no red light and no sentry. Only a bar across the road. Beyond it, in the shadows, something was flapping in the wind. The leading vehicles stopped and word was passed back for the rest of the column to halt, while we investigated matters further. On either side of the road there was wire and in places the soil seemed to have been dug up. This looked unpleasantly like the minefield we had heard about. If so, it meant that our only line of approach lay along the road and through the road blocks. David summoned Bill Cumper, as the expert on mines, and invited him to give his opinion of this somewhat disquieting discovery.


Bill made one of his inevitable jokes and then we watched him while he went forward and poked about in the darkness. Evidently our suspicions were well founded, for after a quick look round, he turned his attention to the road block. He fiddled with the catch for a second or so, and then the bar flew up, leaving the way open for us to advance.


The situation, Bill felt, called for a facetious remark, and, as usual, he rose to the occasion. ‘Let battle commence,’ he said in his best Stanley Holloway manner, stepping politely aside to let the leading jeep through.


The words were hardly out of his mouth when pandemonium broke loose. From the other side of the road block a dozen machine-guns opened up at us at point-blank range; then a couple of 20mm. Bredas joined in, and then some heavy mortars, while sniper's bullets pinged viciously through the trees on either side of the road.


From the front of the column we opened up with everything we had. The leading jeep, driven by Sergeant Almonds of the Coldstream Guards, drove straight at the enemy with all its guns firing and was already well past the road block when an incendiary bullet hit it in the petrol tank and set it ablaze. Another followed and met the same fate. The Bredas in particular, gave our opponents a considerable advantage, while the blazing jeeps furnished a light to aim by. Then, after a time the combined fire of our leading vehicles, now dispersed on both sides of the road, began to tell and there was a marked falling off in the violence of the enemy's opposition.


But it was abundantly clear that we had been expected and it could only be a question of time before fresh reinforcements were brought up. There was no longer any hope of rushing the defences. The element of surprise had gone, and with it all chance of success. Meanwhile time was passing. Hopelessly outnumbered as we were, we could not afford to be caught in the open in daylight. Reluctantly, David gave the order to withdraw. Still returning the enemy's fire while they could, our vehicles dispersed on the open ground on either side of the road and headed singly and in groups for the Gebel, in a race to reach cover before the sun rose.’


Grievous wounds


Here, then, the action in which Drongin was grievously wounded; as described in The Regiment, by Michael Asher, he had been exchanging words with Reg Seekings in one of the forward jeeps when he was hit by a burst of fire in the thigh and groin. He was knocked off the jeep in the process but Seekings managed to gather him up and get him back on board. An officer, thinking Drongin was dead, ordered the ‘corpse’ to be thrown back over the side but it suddenly came to life: eyes wide open, Drongin reprimanded the officer, “Corporal to you, sir.”


A terrible ordeal followed in the long journey back to the patrol’s rendezvous point in the Jebel, Lieutenant Carol Mather recalling that Drongin was slumped in the back - ‘We travelled too fast for the wounded man’s comfort, I’m afraid.’ Indeed it appears Drongin was in such terrible pain that it was deemed best to drop him off. Malcolm Pleydell, the patrol’s M.O., takes up the story in Born of the Desert, in which he refers to Drongin as Dawson:


‘At about eleven o'clock a jeep drove fast into the wadi, bringing the news that Dawson [Drongin] had been found and brought back a part of the way towards the rendezvous, but that he could be moved no further on account of the pain he was suffering. The driver said he was ready to lead us back to the place where Dawson had been left, so, bidding farewell to the wounded and leaving the medical orderlies in charge, Shaw and I set out to follow the other jeep. Nothing of note occurred during the first few miles, until the erratic behaviour of our jeep told us that one of the wheels was punctured. We shouted and yelled to the jeep in front but were unable to attract their attention. Slowly we fell behind and had the chagrin of watching them draw ahead and out of sight.


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