Of course Bardia would eventually fall later in the evening but the morning belonged to the 10th Army with a marginal victory claimed over commonwealth forces, despite the odds against them.

After being all but decimated during Operation Compass, the Italian army regrouped and dug in for the inevitable seige on it's remaining posts in Libya.

The pre-dawn Aussie assault began slow and tactful -two entrenchments were surrounded by sunrise with an intact chain of command. The Italians constructed their fortified positions in a pentagonal formation with effective 47mm A.T.guns dispersed evenly around their camp, between gaps, dug-in. The anti-tank ditches were of no benefit to either side however -the mobile portion of the Aussie attack force was dropped off in the hills East of the fortifications while the carriers and armored cars drove out of A.T. gun range before dawn and sat the battle out until a safer opportunity would develop to assist the assault later on.

The defending force's casualties began to mount early on but were able to keep bouncing back with incredible, yet tested morale despite the seemingly omnipotent force facing them. Of course artillery support played a huge role for keeping the Aussies in check.

At 07:00/turn 7, high command deemed that some of the trenches were ripe for the picking and the first assault began when the defenders seemed disrupted and demoralized enough -they were half-right. Three-quarters of first units assaulted were eliminated initially after being reinforced but one half-strength platoon of INF remained defiant until the end, showing unheard-of bravery for forces expected to buckle under and surrender. Their Tenente, without a morale modifier, was able to keep his cool and rally them from demoralization twice and manage to send both a HMG and ENG unit fleeing towards the hills, leaving ony one INF left to carry out the assault. A second Aussie assault fizzled out and ended in a stalemate. A third assault was ready to spring on a machine-gun nest about to cave in but by then time had run out and the assault was called off at 09:15.

When all the smoke cleared the Italians retained control of all five trenches. The disgruntled Aussie force fired off a few remaining artillery rounds on hapless and exposed demoralized units for a final act of attrition to compensate for their failed foray and were unable to pull a victory from their Digger's hats.

The Italian victory was borderline and in the grand scheme of the overall campaign, the British and Commonwealth forces were still winning this war by 18 V.P.s. reaped from the profits of Operation Compass earlier in the year. The 10th Italian Army would face the 6th Australian Division again very shortly in their defense of Tobruk -more would be asked of them then ....