The role of South African soldiers, and especially the black ones, in World War II, is probably under-recognized. One of these black soldiers, however, deserves special mention as he managed to sink a German boat with an improvised explosive device he made with a can of milk...
Job Maseko was working for a living near Johannesburg when WWII broke out. Initially blacks were prohibited from joining the South African armed forces. Due to the needs of the war, however, this changed. From 1940 it was allowed to rank all, but not in combat positions. Only whites received military training. Masheko was one of 77,000 black South Africans who enlisted in the army.
In 1942 Maseko was in German-besieged Tobruk as a member of the National Guard Corps. He and his approximately 1,200 black colleagues did not carry weapons. When they were performing mission duties they were given a spear!
Eventually they were given rifles due to German pressure. But the German pressure paid off and on June 21, 1942 the garrison surrendered, Tobruk was German. Black POWs, unlike the whites sent to Europe, were sent to a POW camp in the desert where they were forced to work under inhumane conditions, with little food.
The commandant of the camp, Major Schroeder, was particularly cruel and the prisoners were often tortured. When Rommel visited the camp at one point, Masebo was the only one who dared to tell him the truth, despite Schroeder's warnings. As a result, he was severely tortured. It was then sent to the port to load and unload. But Maseko was determined to take revenge.
After all, he had learned a few things about explosives during the siege. Once when he was unloading, in agreement with three of his fellow prisoners who engaged the German guards, he went down into the hold and with a box of cartridges from which he removed the gunpowder, a carton of milk and a fuse he constructed the bomb which he placed between barrels of gasoline that the ship carried.
When they finished the work and just before leaving for the camp the fuse was lit. In a few minutes a terrifying explosion was heard and the ship broke up. He was not punished as the Germans did not suspect that a "subhuman", a black man, could carry out such sabotage.
Back at the camp Masheko discovered and repaired an old radio and through it he was informed of the Allied victory at El Alamein. So he decided to escape and managed to reach the allied lines
Maseko was decorated. Although there was a proposal to award him the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest honour, it did not materialize because he was black. The hero Masheko, however, after the war, was thrown, literally, like a dog . He returned to his hard work and was ignominiously killed when he was hit by a train in 1952. The Apartheid regime had to fall for his heroism to be recognized and his memory honoured.