Arm-chair General - A command stand for the Western Desert

On the night of 22nd November 1941 the HQ of 4th Armoured Brigade had a surprise visit from Afrika Korps and virtually the whole kit and kaboodle was captured. Fortunately, the CO, Brigadier General Alexander Gatehouse was away at a meeting of senior commanders and escaped being put into the bag.

Without his HQ vehicles Gatehouse was forced to adopt a more unusual mode of transport. The regimental history of the Transvaal Scottish records:

" ...in sailed Alex Gatehouse, the gay cavalier of the armour..........with a rug belted around his waist like a kilt, riding into battle seated in an arm-chair strapped to the top of a tank. Gatehouse.....was a man after Pienaar's heart.."

That is too much to resist.