particularly artillery would be ready and the tanks of the 2nd Armoured Division would have been overhauled. The 2nd Armoured Division had a reconnaissance regiment and the 3rd Armoured Brigade (Brigadier Reginald Rimington), which had an under-strength light tank regiment and one equipped with captured Fiat M13/40 tanks. The cruiser regiment arrived in late March with worn-out tracks, after many breakdowns en route and brought the division up to an under-strength armoured brigade. Most of the British tanks were worn out and the Italian tanks were slow and unreliable. The British 2nd Support Group (similar to a small infantry brigade) had only a motor battalion, a 25-pounder field gun regiment, an anti-tank battery and a machine-gun company. The division was short of transport and its workshops were understaffed and lacked spare parts. Two brigades of the 9th Australian Division (Major-General Leslie Morshead) were swapped with two from the 7th Australian Division (Major-General John Lavarack), which had insufficient training, equipment and transport. Lack of transport made it impossible to supply a garrison west of El Agheila, the most favourable position for a defensive line and restricted the 2nd Armoured Division to movement between supply dumps, reducing its limited mobility further. In February, Lieutenant-General Philip Neame took over Cyrcom and predicted that the armoured division would lose many tanks through breakdowns if it had to move far. Neame asked for a proper armoured division, two infantry divisions and adequate air support to hold the area; he was told that there was little to send and none of that before April. In early March, the 9th Australian Division began to relieve the 6th Australian Division (Major-General Iven Mackay) at Mersa Brega for shipment to Greece, which demonstrated the difficulty of tactical moves with insufficient transport and it was withdrawn to the area east of Benghazi. Neame was ordered to conserve the tank units, retire as far as Benghazi if pressed, abandon it if necessary, and hold the high ground nearby for as long as possible, with no prospect of reinforcement before May. Neame was to fight a delaying action up the Via Balbia towards Benghazi and then the defiles near Er Regima and Barce; the tanks would move to Antelat to operate against the flank and rear of an attacker moving up the road or across the desert to Tobruk, falling back on a flank if necessary. On 20 March, the 2nd Armoured