Three friends are droving cattle in Australia in 1939: the restless Bluey Donkin, easy-going Milo Trent and English writer Peter Linton, who is in the country on a working holiday.

After early successes against the poorly led Italians, the Commonwealth forces are driven back by Rommel, and the advancing Germans cut off and besiege Tobruk.

[3] In July 1943 Variety reported Charles Munro would help finance two films of Chauvel, Rats of Tobruk and Fuzzy-wuzzies.

[8] Mary Gay was working as a clerk in a department store when discovered in a talent quest and cast in the role of the nurse who romances Peter Finch.

[9] Shooting took place starting in November 1943 with the first scenes shot at Cronulla Beach, standing in for the perimeter of Tobruk.

The critic from the Argus thought it was better than Forty Thousand Horsemen[18] but the one from the Sydney Morning Herald claimed that: The fictional background is dull and uninventive, the characterisation often stilted and self-consciously patterned to arbitrary types, and the editing loose and jumpy as the story which, in its amateurish nature, is a dead-weight on the entire production.

The chief merits of the film, which was made in the face of great difficulties that may explain, but do not excuse, its weaknesses for a commercial market, are its reconstruction of Tobruk and the fidelity of its action scenes to historic fact.

Yet, while these action scenes are truthful, their interpretation by the aim leaves their outlines and purposes vague so that an audience has to guess too much about who's fighting who and what the strategy is.

[22] The critic from The New York Times called the movie "one of the most harrowing bores in years from anywhere... most of the eighty five minutes is crawling agony... it's a toss up as to which is more primeval, Mr Chauvel's direction or the acting of the entire cast.