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
1st Armoured Division (India) Lorried Infantry Brigade away with the Punjab Boundary Force. The wartime 255th Indian Tank Brigade had previously been redesignated in June 1946 as 1st Armoured Brigade and assigned to 1st Armoured Division. The division played a major role in Operation Polo, the integration of Hyderabad into the Indian Union in 1948. During this time Major General Joyanto Nath Chaudhuri was serving as the division's commander, and he served as Military Governor of the state in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. For the Hyderabad operation, the division controlled the 1st Armoured Brigade and the 7th and 9th Infantry Brigades. The