7th Armoured Division (United Kingdom) of Major-General Richard O'Connor, was massively outnumbered. However, the Italian Army consisted largely of leg infantry; its artillery dated back to the First World War, it had no armoured cars and a few antitank weapons, which were effective only against light and cruiser tanks. As such, it proved to be no match for the British. The Western Desert Force captured 130,000 Italians as prisoners of war (POWs) between December 1940 and February 1941 in piecemeal battles. During the Italian retreat in January 1941, Major-General O'Connor ordered the Desert Rats to travel south of the Jebel Akhdar and cut off the
7th Panzer Division (Wehrmacht) sea, leaving what was left of its heavy equipment behind each time. After fighting defensively across Prussia and northern Germany, the surviving men escaped into the forest and surrendered to the British army northwest of Berlin in May 1945. Following the completion of the invasion of Poland, the limited effectiveness of the light divisions caused the German High Command to order the reorganization of the four light divisions into full panzer divisions. In October 1939, the 2nd Light Division became the 7th Panzer Division, one of Germany's ten armoured divisions. It consisted of 218 tanks in three battalions, with two