The last days of the Australians at Tobruk in October 1941

With Australians stuck temporarily at Tobruk, they needed to be provided for. The 2/13th Battalion had given their equipment to the British "Yorks and Lancs" battalion. We already saw that they were given the equipment that had been intended for the Polish Officers Legion. The battalion would be under the control of the Polish Carpathian Brigade for the last acts in Tobruk. The Polish Cavalry Regiment was holding a front in the Salient. Three companies of the battalion were sent out to the area, while the fourth company waited for the area that they would be assigned to be visited.
This was part of the Western Sector, which had traditionally been over-extended. There was some effort made to shorten the front to improve the situation. The plan had been to put the cavalry regiment in the center. On the right, the Polish battalion would get the new group. A new Czechoslovakian battalion was in the spot that the 2/13th would occupy. Where the 2/13th Battalion would hold, there was a deep wadi with posts cut into a cliff. The wadi was some 150 feet deep. If it rained, there would be water ata the bottom.
Tobruk had depended for a long time on water from wells in the no-mans land. There was even a pumping station in the wadi. That was only made possible first by the Indian cavalry and then the Polish cavalry. Their aggressive operations had kept the enemy from causing problems over the wells. There were some of the usual named outposts that guarded the water supply. They were named "Cocoa 1,2  and 3, Big Cheetah and Little Cheetah". They were located on the wadi side near the enemy.
The first men from the 2/13th Battalion went to the area during the night of 25-27 October 1941. In the morning of 27 October, Major Colvin visited the Polish Cavalry Regiment headquarters. There was still a great deal of dust in the air following the previous days' dust storm. The Polish brigade commander stopped by the cavalry regiment headquarters at about 10:30am. He told Major Colvin, of the 2/13th Battalion, that a prisoner had told them that the enemy planned to attack near the wadi on the next morning. Two Libyans had been captured. One was a civilian spy who had been sent to scout the area. General Kopanski, the Polish commander, met with Colonel Burrows and General Scobie to talk about the news. They considered not having the 2/13th move into place, but decided to go ahead with the planned move. This is based on the account in Vol.III of the Australian Official History.