It was all over, the British hopes of reaching Benghazi were in tatters. Lieutenant Singh was distraught - his brave Punjabi boys had been massacred and yet here he still was and not a scratch on him.
There was a small fuel dump just off a rudimentary road. Up the road was a basic hut with a well inside a type of courtyard. Initially it looked like the British had come up trumps - they could replenish their dwindling water and ‘liberate’ well-needed fuel supplies. Before they could get too excited though they could hear the low groan of DAK armour and see the clouds of dust showing that Jerry had the same idea and wasn’t going to let them stroll in and take it. An SDKFZ-250 complete with an infantry section rumbled into view and was then lost again behind the building. A truck emerged and disgorged another section near to the fuel while Lieutenant Singh sent one of his own sections to contest this. He brought up his medium mortar behind a sand dune to give covering fire.
His own ‘armour’ - a Humber MkII from the recce squadron supported the infantry by the fuel dump while his second infantry section were going to try and probe the centre. The Hun brought up a recce squad in a Kubelwagon ahead of the well on the British left and Lieutenant Singh would send his jeep borne medium machine team to deal with them when they eventually turned up - where the blasted damn were they?
The Royal Artillery did their best to help the Sikhs but on this occasion they were a little off the mark and Jerry pushed on unperturbed. The British centre section soon took a hell of a battering from the Jerry’s in and around the courtyard by the well, the recce team and the half-track moving up on their flank. The British mortar and the MMG when it got set up damaged the recce team but it was not enough to redress the balance. Meanwhile by the fuel dump lieutenant Singh thought his men had the Hun when the Humber moved up on the flank of an LMG team but couldn’t make it count and return fire from these and some other infantry scurrying about in the palms did for the Sikh’s own LMG team and they were cut down. The only ‘consolation’ was the medium A/T gun brought up by Jerry to deal with the Humber was as ineffectual as the scout car.
The Humber wasn’t going to hang around to see if they got any better and set off to support what was left of the infantry in the centre. The SDKFZ had moved out of sight to avoid this and a forlorn attempt by the HQ squad to attack the half-track with grenades was a failure although they didn’t sustain any casualties which was reward for their foolhardy courage.
The game was up. Jerry had the fuel and the water. Lieutenant Singh and what was left of his force had to beat a hasty retreat and try to extricate as many of their fallen comrades as possible.
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