Here's to the memory of my uncle Clem who died in the battle at Ruin Ridge, July 1942, in the Egyptian desert.
I quote from a talk given at the Australian War Memorial by Peter Stanley on Sunday, 28 July 2002:
"The Australian unit selected to make the main attack was Major Lew McCarter's 2/28th Battalion, a Western Australian unit which had not previously seen action at Alamein. On the evening of 26 July its men rose from the sandy trenches, formed into long, loose lines, and walked southwards in the crisp air of a moonlit desert night towards the Axis-held ridge ahead.
Within minutes men began to fall, but the 2/28th continued to advance. Behind the infantry came the vehicles, the anti-tank guns carried on the trucks of the 2/3rd Anti-Tank Regiment, the 2/28th's Bren carriers and behind them the battalion's ammunition, wireless and stores lorries slowly grinding along in low gear. A Bren carrier was hit by an anti-tank shell, right on a gap in the minefield. In the flames of the burning carrier further shells hit other vehicles around the gap. Soon the flames from four, then eight and finally thirteen burning vehicles illuminated the scene.
Still, the 2/28th reached the objective and began to dig in. They were soon cut off from further aid by German troops filtering in behind them and, because the wireless truck lay burning at the gap, McCarter was unable to communicate with brigade headquarters. As they waited for the dawn they could hear the sounds of battle on their left, where the British 69th Brigade also advanced into a minefield."
Through the inability of reinforcements to relieve them, the diggers were isolated and lost 65 men, with 490 captured.
Here's to their memory.