18 February 1941. Giarabub, Libya.
The Italian outpost had been something of a thorn in the flesh of the British forces in Egypt. There was a garrison of 1,340 Italian and 800 colonial troops, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Salvatore Castagna, the last Italian outpost in Cyrenaica and a danger to the Long Range Desert Group, among others. Despite all the efforts to convince Castagna that his position was hopeless, it was clear that the place would need to be taken by force. Elements of the 6th Australian Cavalry Regiment had been keeping an eye on the place, and doing a good job in convincing the Italians that they were surrounded and threatened by a much larger force than actually existed. The problem was that the force needed to overcome the Italians had to be considerable. It would therefore need considerable resources to supply and maintain it. Resources that that were overstretched already, and needed elsewhere.
Since the beginning of Operation Compass, the New Zealand 4th Brigade had been part of the Masra Matruh garrison, and had been quite annoyed to have been left out of the fighting. Brigadier Edward Puttock had been pestering General Wavell for a chance to have his men have a chance to put their training to good use. Word had come that the 5th Brigade of New Zealanders was due to arrive from England in early March, to join 4th and 6th Brigades, so that the 2nd New Zealand Division would be complete. Wavell had it in mind that the New Zealanders would be part of the force reserved for going to Greece if and when that became necessary. Consulting with General Freyberg, it was agreed that, while waiting for the rest of the Division’s arrival, 4th Brigade would be given the task to clear the last Italian position in Cyrenaica. This would also release the Australian Cavalry who would also need time to get ready for Greece, if that was their next mission.
Getting from Marsa Matruh to Giarabub, a journey of some 200 miles, was done in stages over a couple of days, as there was only enough transport to move one Battalion at a time. The Brigade was accompanied by 4th Field Regiment’s 25-pdr guns; a squadron of the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry Regiment, with Marmon-Harrington armoured cars; and a troop of A11 Matilda tanks being carried on improvised tank transporters. These were three captured Italian diesel lorries towing trailers created by some enterprising engineers using old railway flat cars as the basis. The New Zealanders had been informed that the Italian position was protected by barbed wire emplacements that would probably need something like tank support for the infantry to overcome it. The 51st Bn RTR were happy to offer their support, on the condition that the tanks could be transported, otherwise they would be unable to make the journey.
Ever since the fall of Benghazi, the Australians had been discovering more and more of the Libyan soldiers deserting the position, even a few Italians. The garrison’s rations, which relied on being flown in, had been cut to a bare minimum. The fact that the rest of the Italian forces had been cleared out of Cyrenaica, leaving them as nothing more than a propaganda exercise, had left the garrison’s morale very poor.
An initial approach, on the day the main New Zealander force arrived, had been made under a flag of truce by Brigadier Puttock to get the Italians to surrender. This had been rebuffed, and so from dawn the next day the New Zealand artillery men began to bombard the Italian position. By the nature of the journey they’d made, there was a limited amount of ammunition, but what they had was put to good use. The Australians had done a lot of reconnaissance and had been able to pick a way through the marshy ground that protected the Italian position from the south. 20th Battalion, led by Colonel Kippenberger, worked their way through the difficult going during the previous day and night, so that when the main assault was ready, the Italians would find themselves being assaulted from more than one direction, splitting their defensive fire.
The armoured cars began the morning by demonstrating their presence and, with a company from 18th Battalion, using the Brigade’s three carrier platoons as transport, took over the hangers on the landing ground. While no aircraft had been landing there since the Australian cavalry had destroyed an aircraft, the fact that it was now in the hands of the New Zealanders was another blow to Italian morale, and drove a wedge into the Italian position.
While the armoured cars and carriers achieved their objective, the three infantry tanks were showing themselves clearly, trying to keep the eyes of the garrison on the northerly approach, while Kippenberger’s men took the heights above the Italian garrison as stealthily as possible. When Brigadier Puttock got word that Kippenberger’s men were ready, the artillery began their pre-arranged fire-plan.
The rest of 18th Battalion moved up towards the landing ground to provide covering fire from a westerly direction and act as another threat for the Italian artillery to have to counter and divide their fire between. 19th Battalion, along with the three Matilda tanks, began to move forward behind the artillery barrage. With all this going on, and attracting the full attention of the Italian gunners, 20th Battalion began their assault from the south. This led to the hardest fighting of the day, the Italians had positions that were dug into the hills and knolls that protected the southern side of the position. Kippenberger’s men had the lion’s share of the Brigade’s 3-inch mortars and a company of heavy machine gunners to support them. With the artillery supporting the attack from the north, 20th Battalion needed something to give them an edge.
The men of 19th Battalion found themselves under sustained heavy fire, and the three tanks proceeded primarily on their own. The tanks were too small to provide any more than a few men with cover, and one of the tanks suffered a near miss from an Italian shell that stripped one of its tracks. The crew however remained in the tank and used the pompom gun to great effect. The other two tanks, once again proving themselves immune to Italian anti-tank weapons, reached and breeched the barbed wire. There they halted, giving covering fire while the infantry rushed up. While still under heavy fire, they started to clear out the Italian defensive positions in front of the fort one by one.
When the southern redoubt fell to 20th Battalion in the middle of the morning, the Italian commander realised the game was up. The two Matilda tanks’ guns had stripped the fort of its gates and as the New Zealanders moved up behind one of the tanks, firing from within the fort, and the nearby village ceased. The Italian flag was lowered, and the position was taken by the New Zealand Brigade, with the aid of the Australian cavalry squadron and the British tank troop. The New Zealanders lost seventeen killed and seventy-seven wounded, mostly in 20th Battalion’s hand to hand fighting in the south. The Italians had some 200 killed and many more wounded. 1300 prisoners were taken, as well as over thirty artillery pieces, from 20mm anti-air guns to 77mm field pieces. Over a million rounds of small-arms ammunition was discovered, and more than 10000 shells for the guns was captured intact.
The New Zealanders had a day of rest to get themselves and their prisoners and wounded organised. Their transport began carrying them back towards the delta, but it would take the best part of a week for the whole force, along with their captives and booty, to reach the Alexandria area. The Long Range Desert Group, with a group of Senussi tribesmen, the Libyan Force, took possession of the former Italian position.
NB: This is a month earlier than OTL, when it was a Battalion of Australians who captured the position, without the aid of tanks.
