Lieutenant R. A. Sweet, MM; Auckland; born NZ 31 Aug 1918; labourer. (Source: Dawson, W.D. 18 Battalion and Armoured Regiment. p.410.)

'We opened up on the houses with HE and Co-ax. The leading tank was then hit by an anti-tank weapon, which tore off the cupola ring, killing Sergeant Laird. The rest of the crew bailed out successfully. The tanks that were on the road then retired and took up a hull-down position and shot up the houses and the road. A wounded man was reported a hundred yards short of the railway crossing. Lt. Cullinane took his tank to rescue this man. His tank was bogged. He called me up to tow him out and… the towing bogged me.

Luckily, nothing more was heard from the gun that had done this damage, which was well hidden away among the jumble of buildings in Arielli and would have been almost impossible to dig out. But mortar bombs were still falling along the road, and more tanks were sticking fast as they tried to manoeuvre across the fields. So about 4 p.m. the advance was called off and the tanks were ordered back to 21 Battalion's lines. Laird's tank was recovered by Trooper Eric Brennan, its driver, who ran back to it and drove it off down the road, covered by fire from Sergeant Ron Sweet's tank. Cullinane's and Edmonds's tanks had to be left behind, locked down, with all portable gear removed. Others were dug free or hauled back on to the road, and the whole force filed back along the Orsogna road, still alert for trouble, which, happily, did not occur.

The remark in 18 Regiment's war diary that the operation ‘did not appear to have been very well coordinated with other Div operations at the time’ is quite an understatement. The show seemed pointless and clumsy. The tanks had not been able to achieve anything at all, one good man had been killed and six wounded, the regiment was down to ten fighting tanks. Nobody had even had any lunch that day. After the good work on 15 and 16 December this Arielli show seemed a pitiful anticlimax. Lieutenant R. A. Sweet, MM; Auckland; born NZ 31 Aug 1918; labourer.
' (Source: Dawson, W.D. 18 Battalion and Armoured Regiment. p. 410.) AWMM