i

DAWN of 26 November was unwelcome on the bald top of Belhamed. As early as 6.15 a.m. 18 Battalion was ‘mortared and shelled intensely’¹ and A and B Companies scarcely dared move because of machine-gun fire. An officer of 20 Battalion says much the same, but adds that his men ‘Went back and destroyed A Tk guns passed in the night’. Then there was a minor counter-thrust: ‘about patrol size and [we] would have got the lot if the fwd tps had held their fire’, he says.² It reminded Captain Bassett at Brigade Headquarters of Cemetery Hill in Crete, ‘which Kip and I found more profitable to return to the enemy we could slaughter there’.³ Guns pounded the two battalions from three sides and strong bodies of infantry seemed to be bombarding them with mortars before counter-attacking. But the wounded from the night before were thick in places and the stretcher bearers carried out their work undeterred by the fire. There was no end to this, however, and when they collected all the overnight cases they found more awaiting them from the morning's action.

The other supporting arms had varying degrees of success in getting on to Belhamed. The column came under heavy shellfire at dawn through which it crawled at a nerve-racking pace until it reached the shelter of the wadi just past halfway. The tanks went on ahead from there and the rest stayed for an hour and a half. Just as the depleted squadron was returning, Major Levy² of 31 Anti-Tank Battery decided to attempt what the tank commanders told him was impossible and get his three 2-pounder troops forward to support the infantry. Picking his way on a motor-cycle, Levy led the column in single file along ledges on the side of the escarpment and got two troops forward without loss to 18 Battalion, but the fire was too heavy to get through to 20 Battalion and the third troop did not make its way up to that unit until dusk. Major Johansen³ got 5 and 6 Platoons of his 2 MG Company into place on the escarpment north of the 18th in much the same way and the excellent observation to the north and the long range of the Vickers guns gave them a wide selection of targets. Behind them, on the eastern slopes of the wadi, 46 Field Battery had gone into action at 6.30 a.m. in response to ‘an urgent call for support from 20 Bn’⁴ and was kept so busy from then onwards that, when it became possible to move the guns farther forward, only E Troop could be spared and B Troop remained to answer the many calls for support. These calls continued to be so frequent and compelling that B Troop had to stay where it was. Though both troops were put on the permanent grid of the regiment by the survey section in ‘very fast time’,⁵ the battery therefore could not function as such throughout the day.

It was a difficult and strenuous morning for the field gunners, as Duff describes it:

At approx 0900 hrs, Bde reported 18 and 20 Bns were being heavily attacked and asked for ‘defensive fire’. The safe lines were decided on with the Brig. and all four btys engaged by predicted fire. This was reported as very successful and bears out that the 1/100000 map is very accurate. Some delay occurred as Arty boards had not sufficient scope to compete with the switches asked for.

At 1030 hrs, repetition of these concentrations was asked for and fired, the major opposition was apparently neutralised. The amn situation was acute, and orders were given for essential and emergency tasks only to be engaged. This naturally resulted in much enemy mortar fire being brought down on our infantry, but as guns were down to 30 r.p.g.¹ little could be done.

Communication with BELHAMED was entirely by W/T as OP lines were continually being cut, and movement on the feature itself was practically impossible.

The ammunition stocks may be compared with the average expenditure per gun per day since the 22nd of just over 21 rounds and the average fired this day of 23.5 rounds per gun.

Another cause for grave concern was the loss this morning of three commanding officers in succession in 20 Battalion, an extraordinary piece of bad luck, particularly since the first of them was Kippenberger on whom Inglis relied greatly. Kippenberger had come upon Peart and with him checked the positions of both battalions on the map. As he put it in his diary, he was ‘delightedly saying everyone was just where he should be when we came under bursts of M.G. fire from about 600 yards.’ One long burst, starting low, lifted towards him and he watched the track of the bullets in the sand ‘but was hit on the way down, bullet going through left thigh entering just about knee’. His adjutant, Captain Rhodes,² was hit at the same time in the face and hand and Captain Mackay³ of B Company, 18 Battalion, was wounded in the head. This was shortly before the tanks appeared on the scene and one of them was set alight nearby, remaining with its column of black smoke a prominent landmark for some hours.

This rapid change of command was bewildering not only to Inglis but to Freyberg himself. It made it look as though the 20th was indeed in a bad position and in need of help and partly accounts for the greater interest taken by Division this day in 4 Brigade than in 6 Brigade, which was actually in a far worse position.² When Fountaine as well was wounded (and Captain Agar then took command of the 20th) it made things look black indeed, though it was no more than bad luck that three COs in succession were hit. Nine officers altogether in 20 Battalion were wounded in the night attack and on this day and total casualties in the unit were nearly 70, a far smaller loss than any of Barrowclough's four battalions had so far suffered, while 18 Battalion lost no more than 49, including three officers, on the 25th and 26th, leaving the unit with the substantial strength of 21 officers and 610 other ranks.

Talk of counter-attack on Belhamed was exaggerated, though this ‘bare feature providing no cover against the heavy shelling and mortaring’³ was anything but comfortable. At 4 Brigade Head-quarters it was assumed that the enemy previously on Belhamed had been driven westwards, and Ed Duda got undeserved blame for much of the fire which came down on the two battalions. Inglis was very much alive to the uses of air support and his staff made a series of urgent requests in the morning for bombing in an area which included Ed Duda and thus caused a tragic error.

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With no direct wireless link between the New Zealand Division and the Tobruk garrison, 13 Corps had to act as go-between and the delay thus imposed also contributed to the ensuing tragedy. Freyberg had been anxious to know when 70 Division was due to advance to Ed Duda and Gentry had signalled at 4.50 a.m. asking ‘What time does TOBRUK garrison attack?’, to which Corps replied at 7.30⁴ that the diversionary attack had already been mounted at 9 p.m. the previous night. Then Corps signalled Scobie at 11.15 a.m. as follows:

linking up with tobruk, 26 november and night 26-27 november

NZ DIV reports BEL HAMED and SIDI REZEGH captured but stiff fighting still going on both places. Ammunition situation precarious. Exert greatest possible pressure toward BEL HAMED and ED DUDA to relieve pressure on NZ DIV.

But Scobie had already got wind of Freyberg's troubles and could in any case have guessed some of them from the obvious fact that Ed Duda was still in enemy hands.¹ At all events Scobie decided that no mere diversionary attack was now called for and he ordered 32 Army Tank Brigade to start its long-awaited advance to Ed Duda and to be prepared to fight for this position.

While the New Zealanders were calling for bombing on Ed Duda, therefore, Brigadier Willison was marshalling his tanks and armoured cars and 1 Essex with supporting arms to seize this important feature, the climax of the Tobruk sortie. The plan was simple. The Matildas of 4 Royal Tanks, followed by the cruisers and light tanks of 1 Royal Tanks and with the I tanks of D Squadron, 7 Royal Tanks, in reserve, were to cross the intervening ground from the existing perimeter at full speed, with supporting fire from two RHA batteries; then 1 Essex escorted by C Squadron, King's Dragoon Guards, plus anti-tank and Vickers guns, would quickly take over. Zero hour was five minutes past midday.

The enemy was alert and shellfire damaged two tanks before they crossed the starting line, but the tanks crossed the four and a half miles to Ed Duda without further harm. Fire on the objective became very heavy indeed and in a haze of dust and smoke 4 Royal Tanks tried to settle down on the feature until the infantry arrived. Willison could see through the dust ‘rows of flashes’ from enemy guns below and judged that a whole panzer division must be facing him. Then the dust blew away and for a revealing moment he could see no more than a series of field-gun positions. To his tanks on the crest of the rise he then signalled ‘Cease 2-pdr all Besa’, getting them to concentrate the fire of their medium machine guns on the vulnerable enemy below. ‘This was too much for the enemy guns’, the United Kingdom narrative states; ‘the crews of the nearest four put up their hands. The men of the next battery turned round and fled, leaving their guns. The crews of the four guns on our left were completely wiped out.…’² Willison could now order up 1 Essex.

The carrier platoon led the way, then came D Company with an anti-tank troop and B Company echeloned back to the right, C to the left, then Headquarters, and at the rear A Company with the transport. Some 200 yards from the escarpment at Ed Duda the carriers and a platoon of D Company were heavily bombed, the company commander and carrier platoon commander were both killed and some thirty-five others killed or wounded. This was the bombing ordered by 4 Brigade in ignorance of Scobie's moves but, though it took away much of the glow of the success which was soon achieved, it did not halt the advance. As the Essex history says,

At this time the whole Tank Brigade had withdrawn to the left flank, and was formed up ready to support the Battalion if required.

As the remainder of the Battalion reached the escarpment, it came under heavy artillery fire at fairly short range, both from field and heavy artillery. Many of the guns could actually be seen and some of them were undoubtedly firing over open sights.¹

Some of these guns were in a wadi to the north-west and the Vickers guns of 1 Northumberland Fusiliers gave their crews a lively time as the Essex advanced; but arrangements for supporting fire from 1 RHA fell through.

Ed Duda itself was not nearly as well prepared for defence as had been expected and its Italian ‘garrison’ quickly surrendered. A platoon commander² of C Company, 1 Essex, whose vivid account is appended to the regimental history, says, ‘Two Italians came out of a wadi waving white rags’, and when he waved them over, to his surprise ‘they were followed by another thirty or so.’ He left one man to guard them and pushed on with the rest of his platoon to the By-pass road, where he saw ‘a continuous storm of shells bursting down its length, and knocking the telegraph poles about like peasticks.’ Despite this fire he took his objective with comparatively few losses and disposed his platoon with one section covering the road and the other two sections a hundred yards in front of it.

Though 4 Brigade was no more than two miles away, it remained for some time unaware that Ed Duda had been seized. At 1.12 p.m. Freyberg signalled to Godwin-Austen, repeated to Scobie, that ‘Situation demands TOBRUK Garrison exerts its greatest pressure as early as possible. We shall endeavour to reach ED DUDA after darkness.’ From its vantage points on the higher escarpment, however, 6 Brigade had a good though distant view and at 4.30 p.m. in a situation report described the action as follows:

Throughout the past two hours a tank battle has been taking place about three miles ahead on the right front, this must be the sortie being made by the Tobruk garrison.

The first news at Division, however, was a signal from Scobie to Freyberg which came in at 3.15 p.m. and stated baldly: ‘We are on ED DUDA—ensure NOT bombed’. It did not occur to the recipients that this was in any way connected with the bombing which had been ordered on Ed Duda a little earlier, and even that night Freyberg did not suspect the truth and wrote this in his diary:

Everyone was greatly cheered at lunch time when sweeps of RAF fighters drove enemy fighters out of the air, a fight taking place above the front. This was followed by a formation of 17 long nosed Blenheims dropping 17,000 lbs of explosives on the enemy. They flew over us and gave Greece and Create conscious people a slit trench feeling until the fighters were identified! Further sweeps came and then 19 Marylands with 19 odd tons for the Boche. From all accounts both found their marks on German posns… 4 Bde's request for air support on the Belhamed posn was most effectively answered.

When news came that Scobie had reached Ed Duda Freyberg had to make up his mind how to join hands with him there at the earliest possible moment.

iii

In the meantime Freyberg visited Barrowclough and saw for himself the difficulties 6 Brigade faced. The first task had been to extricate those troops, chiefly of 21 Battalion, who had got into difficulties during the night. Various detachments of the 21st and of A Company, 24 Battalion, were below the escarpment at dawn, or sheltering in its many wadis, or silhouetted above it, and some were in perilous straits. The rest of 24 Battalion, much of 26 Battalion, and elements of 25 Battalion were under fire from the crest of the escarpment, against which they had poor cover and to which they could seldom make effective reply. Those who were beyond the reach of enemy on the Sidi Rezegh escarpment—the field gunners, administrative elements and B Echelons—came under fire from the southern escarpment.

For a short time guns in the Ed Duda area and north of Belhamed were directed by observers in a lattice-work tower erected for that purpose south-west of the Mosque;¹ but the 18-pounder troop of 33 Anti-Tank Battery, M Troop, which had taken up positions in the 24 Battalion area facing west and south while it was still dark, soon deprived the enemy of this advantage. After dawn 47 Field Battery, back from its excursion to the brink of the escarpment, went into action on the edge of the airfield and, despite opposition from enemy guns, 48 Field Battery succeeded in siting its guns even farther forward on the north-western edge and found a profusion of targets to the north, west and south. The 2-pounders were also well up in support of the infantry but under such fire that their crews had to keep their heads down most of the day.

I sent two men towards them to see who they were. They were Jerries and dug in. They didn't waste time but opened fire straight away with machine guns and rifles as soon as they saw us. I told the men to fix bayonets and was pleased to see them drop to the ground as one to do this. They waited till I told them and then away we went up the hill. It was a bloody do with grenades and bayonets. When the area was cleared we went on but more slowly as we had wounded and some prisoners.

Smith headed eastwards along the ridge, making good use of cover offered by the broken ground, rather than risk his men on the open ground to the south, and in due course came upon the large wadi north of the airfield in the upper part of which some of 6 Brigade were established. With twenty-nine men, five of them wounded, and five prisoners, he staggered in and after a brief rest took up a defensive position in the area.

The night of the 25th-26th had played tricks on several detachments by letting them settle in what looked like dominating ground but which turned out to be overlooked on both sides by enemy. ‘Daylight showed us what a bad position we had taken’, says Private Logan¹ of 7 Platoon of Forder's company. ‘Enemy fire of all descriptions poured into the area.’ Elements of 7 and 8 Platoons had linked up in the dark under Lieutenant Hill² near the edge of the escarpment and found a section of Vickers guns had dug in in front of them. Farther east part of C Company of the 24th was in much the same condition and other Vickers gunners were very much on their own in front of the infantry and under concentrated fire. After an hour or so several tanks nosed forward, and as their first task they bombed some of the machine-gunners with grenades, driving them from their shallow trenches, and killed or captured them. Another Vickers gun fired a stream of bullets at one tank at such close range that, when its commander raised himself to look around, his head was promptly shot off. Another Vickers section found itself unable to cover the ground immediately in front because of the curve of the slope and the men had to take potshots with their rifles at several LMGs sited within 50 yards of them.³ Forder says that his men tried to ‘engage the enemy in the Mosque area from the lip of the wadi but it was solid rock and the contour was such that the view of the German positions could not be obtained without complete exposure to other enemy positions’, and as the morning advanced all concerned realised they could do little from where they were.

A party estimated at 150–200 strong gradually assembled under Allen in a large wadi and somehow he had to get them all away. The closeness of the enemy had one good result, however, in that they made no mistake about the wounded, and several accounts mention that firing eased as soon as stretcher bearers or walking wounded were seen. Forder goes on to say.

As the first groups moved off and came within view of the enemy a most remarkable thing happened. The German fire ceased abruptly and, when it became clear that the enemy… intended to allow the carrying parties to move unmolested, all the wounded were got under way followed by the remainder of the troops.

By degrees and with many adventures Allen's party got back to rejoin 6 Brigade, with Allen himself bringing up the rear and reporting at Brigade Headquarters about 4 p.m.

But others outside his control and left largely to their own resources were not all so fortunate. His B Company, for example, under Captain Yeoman,¹ had been silhouetted on the slopes at first light and dashed down to take cover from the fire which at once started up. Yeoman turned left, perhaps half his men followed, and all were soon pinned down by a strong Bersaglieri position until the three tanks came up and captured them. The other half of the company followed Sergeant Lord,² who turned right and found shelter in a small wadi. The tanks came on and captured some of Lord's men, too; but others escaped in a mad dash back up the slopes, in the course of which they scattered. Lord did his best to collect them but found the task hopeless and with ten men was forced to ground by fierce fire. He could see over the crest, however, and was a sad witness of the capture of Hargrave's and Yeoman's men. When fire died down this small party crept back along a gully and joined a larger group which was much troubled by a machine gun some distance off. Lord's party stalked this and then charged and drove away its crew, at a cost of three killed and two wounded, and in carrying back the wounded, unlike those who had done so earlier, they came under further fire.

Lieutenant-Colonel Page also helped greatly, when he heard of Allen's predicament, by sending his C Company northwards to the escarpment to cover the withdrawal of Allen's group. Mortars and the reserve platoon of 3 MG Company gave covering fire and two platoons rose to their feet and charged, reaching a crest from which they could cover the retreat. When they tried to get farther forward they attracted much fire and lost several men, and the company commander, Captain Thomson,³ decided to stay where he was. From there his men worked hard getting wounded of 21 Battalion up the slopes and covering the others of Allen's party until they all got through. This took some hours and then Thomson withdrew to his original position, many of the 21st staying with him. The action cost him 5 killed and 17 wounded and he welcomed these reinforcements. D Company of the 26th was on top of the rise to his right rear, with A farther east and D to the south behind C.

Ferguson had been led to believe that 25 Battalion was no more than 80 or 90 strong and at the end of its tether and he was only too willing to help. He reached Burton at 11.15 a.m. and at once charged forward with the carriers to occupy a slight rise north-west of Burton's position. Enemy had been forming up apparently to attack and this sudden move discouraged them; but the ground seized was found to be unoccupied and not, as Burton thought, an enemy position. Smoke put down in support blinded the carriers and caused two of them to collide, putting one out of action. Few men were hit, however, and this energetic thrust seemed to take the heart out of a hitherto aggressive enemy and greatly ease the strain on the battered 25th. No further counter-attack developed, though mortar fire became so heavy at 5 p.m. and again at dusk that Burton expected one.

Meanwhile 26 Battalion could no longer ignore a strongpoint to the right rear of D Company and in an elevated section of the escarpment rim, dominating the whole of Page's rear and causing much trouble. One platoon attacked but was driven back. Then this and another platoon made a determined effort to close in with heavy mortar support; but this, too, proved futile and nine men were wounded. These lay on exposed ground south of the strongpoint and it took three hours to bring them back under heavy fire, though the rescuers luckily escaped harm. The strongpoint was evidently far more extensive and well-equipped than had been thought and a third and even heavier attack was being prepared, only to be abandoned when word came that the battalion would mount another night attack on Sidi Rezegh.

Brigadier Barrowclough had toured as much as he could of the front soon after dawn and found the situation ‘disorganised and somewhat precarious’, as he wrote in his report. ‘Every effort was made to organise a defensive system but the difficulties of doing so were tremendous as the whole area was under observation and fire from strong enemy positions’, he added. Shuttleworth deserved every credit for the way he ‘restored a very grave situation’. But Barrowclough could see for himself that the troops were ‘extremely tired, having been continuously in action for several days’ and could still get no rest because of the ‘constant shelling and machine gun fire to which they were subjected’. At 4.30 p.m. 6 Brigade sent the situation report to Division which described what could be seen of the sortie to Ed Duda and also outlined the general situation, which at that time was ‘quiet with sporadic shooting by a hy inf gun in the valley below’. A ‘series of heavy counter attacks from the North and later from the West’ had been mounted against 24 Battalion; but by a slip of the pen it reported, ‘Casualties have been light’.² There were also ‘gun and machine gun positions well dug in down on the flat below’—stronger in fact than anyone yet realised, as 4 Brigade was to learn.

iv

He also summoned Brigadiers Miles and Watkins to consult them ‘regarding moves for continuing the battle after we link at Tobruk’. Everything depended on the situation the morning disclosed. ‘Possibly little chukker and big raid’, he dictated for his diary.¹ Captain Bell came in with a suggestion that the German armour at present in the frontier area might intervene either along the Via Balbia or the Trigh Capuzzo; but this gained small attention, for there was no thought that enough German tanks remained to exercise much influence on the battle. A signal had moreover been intercepted to the effect that the Germans outside Tobruk ‘were encircled by armd forces and wanting to know where their panzer division was’,² and he meant to exploit the weakness this suggested.

From a wider viewpoint an LO from 13 Corps brought encouraging news. Corps Headquarters was moving ‘considerably nearer us’ and there was no suggestion that this was due to the enemy's encouragement. ‘They say NZ Div has been the only star in the firmament recently but now consider things much better—Armd Bdes recovering, tanks from Omar district gone up near Bardia, Corps Intelligence considering this latter a last desperate move.’ Thus he recorded it all in his diary, adding ‘We shall see’. Any anxieties this may have prompted regarding 5 Brigade were offset by a ‘cheerful letter’ from Hargest. Though written the day before, this expressed firm confidence that the enemy armour would make little impression on Hargest's positions at Capuzzo and Upper Sollum: ‘We are ready to receive them and will give a good account of ourselves’.³

v

To 44 RTR 19 Bn

(1)	TOBRUK GARRISON IS ON ED DUDA
(2)	You will join them there SP ST1 & AXIS as given2
(3)	You will fire green Verey flares on approaching & they will do likewise
(4)	ACK

The scheme Inglis put forward was that 44 Royal Tanks should drive at top speed on a narrow front straight to Ed Duda, passing south of the Belhamed defences, and that 19 Battalion should follow on a front of 300 yards. He hoped that the sound of the tanks would be enough to discourage opposition and did not expect them to fire; but another reason for sending them was that he wanted them to guard 19 Battalion against tank counter-attack next day. Lieutenant-Colonel Yeo was ‘unenthusiastic’³ and when Brigadier Watkins appeared on the scene (together with Freyberg) he supported Yeo's objections. As the 1 Army Tank Brigade diary says, it was ‘a new conception [of] the use of Army Tanks’ and Inglis says Watkins ‘tried all he knew to dissuade me’.⁴ The tanks were under Inglis's command and he insisted that they go, though he was open to suggestion on details. Thereupon Watkins said, ‘Well, if they have to go, I suppose that's as good a way as any’. So the question was settled and ‘Yeo could not have been more co-operative than he then became.’⁵

At 9.30 p.m. the first wave of tanks drove off and a quarter of an hour later 19 Battalion set out. Despite Inglis's intentions the leading tanks soon found a use for their guns and the 44 Royal Tanks diary says, ‘Strong enemy position was overrun and many enemy killed’ and ‘Enemy A/Tk guns, Fd guns and M.Gs encountered were destroyed’. But no delay resulted and in an hour and a quarter the leading tanks fired their green flares, got the correct response, and were among friends on Ed Duda.

The second wave of tanks, with 19 Battalion, reported ‘No enemy fire … all guns having been silenced by 1st Echelon’ and this is confirmed by numerous post-war accounts, though it is contrary to a legend of gruesome slaughter which gained currency in the Division. The axis of advance passed just outside the strong position south of Belhamed which had caused much trouble throughout the day and there was some firing from the south; but the leading tanks had achieved their purpose and the slight fire directed at 19 Battalion was wildly inaccurate. Lieutenant Fleming,⁵ whose platoon of C Company was on the extreme left and most likely to meet opposition, remembers none. ‘It was a very dark night’, he says, ‘and we could just see the I Tanks occasionally. My main concern… was to keep up in line with the troops on my right.… We did, however, pass over quite a few slit trenches which appeared to be deserted, the odd shape appeared in the darkness in front and then vanished.… There seemed to be a fair amount of shooting out on our open left flank, none in front and very little on our right flank. En route we captured nothing, saw very little and suffered no casualties’. Thomson, his company commander, saw two prisoners come through and ‘some of our men shooting up some apparently deserted bivvies on the way’. He saw no fighting, however, and the one or two guns he passed had been abandoned.

A small Italian camp yielded a few sappers as prisoners and another which was at first fired at turned out to be a dressing station or field hospital, also Italian, which according to one account provided another fifty prisoners and also contained a few captive South Africans. On the way, too, the men passed ‘a group of big guns, whose barrels made grotesque outlines in the darkening sky’,¹ and their hardest task in the advance was to find ways and means of putting them out of action, which they did in the end with sledgehammers borrowed from tank crews. The 19 Battalion diary says, ‘The enemy losses in equipment are known to have been eight field guns, some of large calibre, possibly 210 mm.…In addition to 6 German and 4 Italian prisoners being taken we released 5 of our own Tank personnel and one 20 Bn pte being held prisoner in a compound.’ One carrier was lost by some unstated means, perhaps mechanical trouble, and its crew transferred to other carriers which lacked full crews. The battalion reached its goal about 1 a.m. on the 27th without a single casualty. The legend of slaughter thus obscured the real and considerable achievement of 44 Royal Tanks and the 19th in maintaining direction in the dark across 10,000 yards of uneven and unfamiliar desert without a man or a vehicle going astray, a matter not only of navigation but of training and discipline.

Hartnell went forward to obtain instructions and eventually found Brigadier Willison of 32 Army Tank Brigade, who told him to go into reserve in a shallow wadi a mile and a half north-east of Ed Duda and rather more than two miles due west of Belhamed. The men were meanwhile tired, cold and bored with waiting, and it was not until next day that they began to appreciate the historic nature of their achievement.

Behind the battalion a line-laying party of J Section, Divisional Signals, under Second-Lieutenant Brennan,² with 16,000 yards of cable, picked its way in the dark to lay by far the longest telephone line in the Division, reporting back along it from time to time to Brigade Headquarters, where Inglis, Bassett, Duff, Captain Marshall³ of J Section, and others listened on a party line. On one occasion Marshall heard Bassett say, ‘I wonder if the Brigadier is listening’ and a gruff voice interjected, ‘Too bloody right I am.’ By 4 a.m. on 27 November the line was complete and Brennan reported that 19 Battalion was on Ed Duda, to the immense relief of the listeners. After this, however, the line was frequently broken by shellfire and proved almost impossible to maintain.