A couple of things that come to my mind on Australians and WW2:

The Kokoda trail

http://www.kokodatrail.com.au/history.html

The siege of Tobruk

The siege was only a couple of months old when the renegade Lord Haw Haw, broadcasting from Berlin, said they were "caught like rats in a trap" and applied it to the garrison because most of its men could find shelter only underground while the bombers were overhead. Our men accepted the title with relish. To one another, they were "the rats." To the Axis they were rats with razor-sharp teeth. They became "The Rats of Tobruk"

http://www.diggerhistory.info/pages-...ww2/tobruk.htm

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