'‘We then set off back into the minefield, following the tracks we had made previously. About in the centre of the field we came across the missing carrier stopped with Daly wounded and the others fairly groggy. We picked them up, turned around and headed out of the field.’ Apparently a mortar bomb had landed on Daly's carrier.

Beckingham ‘then drove like merry hell for our own lines.’ The carrier went through an artillery regiment and passed some British tanks heading in the opposite direction—miles too late of course!—and pulled up near an RAP, where Beckingham collapsed. ‘We delivered him and Daly to the Medicos, and Hambling and myself went back to platoon headquarters,’ says Cox. Beckingham was awarded the MM. Sergeant G. G. Beckingham, MM; Christchurch; born NZ 20 Dec 1914; painter and paperhanger; wounded 22 Jul 1942.; Relief of Tobruk - The shortage of officers in B Company was now acute and Sergeant Martin rose splendidly to the occasion, directing a series of local thrusts and helping to turn the tide of German aggression. Barrowclough had also committed the four Vickers guns of 9 MG Platoon, and two of these came across from McNaught's headquarters and were stationed on the escarpment by the time D Company came forward, though too close to the enemy to be effective at first. Their guns were far too conspicuous to set up at what was no more than Tommy-gun range of the Germans. It was not until the situation became a little more stable that these two guns went into action on the plateau to their left front and the reassuring clatter of their fire, steady and persistent, did much to strengthen this front. The other two guns of 9 MG Platoon were much troubled by accurate and close-range fire, and by first one tank (duly knocked out by K Troop) and then another which passed within a few yards, and they could not get into action as ‘the very least movement brought down a hail of fire’. Private G. G. Beckingham, quoted in Kay, 27 (Machine Gun) Battalion, p. 133.
' (Source: Kay, R. 27 (Machine Gun) Battalion. pp. 253-4.; Murphy, W.E. The Relief of Tobruk. p. 189n.) AWMM