They drove in out of the desert and took the isolated fortress before the Italian garrison could resist.
Then the operation went wrong, and the Germans moved in. With the Allied armies on the move to El Alamein, Rommel could not risk an enemy-held strongpoint in his rear.
But no one on the British side was going to lift a finger to save the seventeen men of John Offer’s Glasshouse Gang. They had only one hope of survival: they’d be dead men or prisoners if they held out in Fort Telatha, but if they could slip out before the balloon went up, who would know if they were alive or dead?