2 Cdo Coy History

2010 is the 50th anniversary of the 2 Commando Company annual camp at Point Lonsdale, and of the Rip tragedy

Almost fifty years ago, search aircraft and boats were scouring the choppy waters outside the Rip in a final search for a Melbourne commando missing from a disastrous Army exercise the night before. Along the Bass Strait beachfront fellow commandos also searched for their missing comrade, Roger Wood. Two other men had already been confirmed drowned, with a number injured.

The previous evening, on 17 February 1960, an 'attack' flotilla of 74 commandos in kayaks, 3 man and 10 man inflatable Zodiacs and various safety craft set off at 1800 hours from the Port Lonsdale Bight beach, planning to crossing the bay and launch a tactical raid on the officer cadet school at Portsea 2 Commando Company had been based at Point Lonsdale for sixteen days of training and military exercises.

The company and its fellow 1 Commando Company in Sydney were, until 1999, the only post-World-War-2 commando units existing in Australia.

The CMF (now known as Army Reserve) commando unit contained many soldiers who had completed their compulsory national service training. They had volunteered to join the commandos while fulfilling their final three years part time training. Many of these young men become so involved in the commando way of life they stayed on as volunteers after they had discharged their national service obligation.

Among the skills they were perfecting off the Lonsdale Bight in the waters of Port Phillip Bay were diving and small craft handling.
At the same time they spent many days practicing raid tactics, under their officers and senior NCOs, a number of whom had served in WWII and the Korean conflict. In the week before the planned amphibious raid on Portsea the company had done a 50-kilometre forced navigation march across the Bellarine Peninsula in over 30 degrees heat. They were fit, highly trained young men.

A couple of hours into the exercise a fierce eight-knot tide caught the raiding party and swept them out to sea through the Rip.
The turning tide was met head-on by the prevailing southwesterly wind, and huge waves - later estimated at 30 feet (ten metres) - pushed the craft backwards, and capsized many of them.

Many of the two-man crews were picked up by larger safety craft, leaving their abandoned kayaks to drift away, only to have the rescue vessel overturned or swamped by the huge seas.

As the night wore on men were rescued by passing ships and a small flotilla of local vessels. A few paddlers made the Portsea shore in their kayaks, but many were picked up from the water, or from up-ended boats, many kilometres out to sea.
Eight of the commandos were rescued from their Zodiac by the Italian liner Toscana, but Roger Wood was dashed from the Toscana's rope ladder by a giant wave after he had helped his comrades to safety.

Glenn Doyle, who later served in the UK parachute battalion, recalls, "All hell broke loose bloody great white topped waves and canoes spread all round the horizon. We were ordered to "raft up" on our safety craft. Towing proved impossible and we thankfully scrambled aboard the safety craft, wrapped the tow lines around the uprights on the DUKW (Army 'Duck') and breathed a sigh of relief we were safe!"

"Shortly afterwards the DUKW, skippered by Eddie Meyer, was swamped by the waves, the pumps couldn't cope, and it sunk."

"Captain Jack Fletcher ordered us to jump and had the foresight to grab a life buoy. Jack did a terrific job. He kept me afloat as my life jacket became useless when the DUKW went down, and he kept us around the one life buoy, we were all exhausted and prone to drift off," Doyle said. Fletcher was later awarded the George Medal for his bravery that night.

"I think we were in the water about three to three-and-a-half hours. We were eventually picked up by a lifeboat from the pilot ship Akuna and some time later I was told that Meyer and Drakopoulos had drowned."

Major Bruce Fox, the company medical officer, who had already been picked up by the Akuna, pronounced both men dead shortly after they were transferred from the lifeboat.

In 2000 a memorial was established on Shortlands Bluff at Queenscliff, overlooking the Rip and dedicated to the soldiers who had died forty years earlier.

The memorial commemorates the three men: Warrant Officer George 'Taffy' Drakopoulos and Pte Roger Wood - whose body was never found - both from 2 Commando Company, and the driver of the DUKW, Eddie Meyer, 41 Amphibious Platoon, Royal Australian Service Corps.

Submitted by Barry Higgins, 1st Commando Regiment Association - Victoria