37 bat­tery, who at this point were firing fuze 222 (air­burst) with the set­ting at .2 and fin­ding it very ef­fec­tive, re­por­ted an SP about 300 yards away and “Tank Alert” was or­dered and the guns hau­led out of the pits so as to be able to en­gage.  The gun­ners had then lit­tle or no pro­tec­tion from mor­tar or SA fire but held on any­how.  H.54941 Sgt. Mutch­eson L.T. and the re­main­der of 37 bat­tery sig­nal ex­change crew were in a house about 300 yards NORTH of their Bat­tery Com­mand Post and did not even awake until 0430 hours!  Shortly af­ter that they heard Jerry force the ci­vil­ians to tell what room they were in but man­aged to shoot their way out and suc­cess­fully re­join their bat­tery.  Two amu­sing inci­dents, amu­sing looked at in retro­spect, hap­pened about this time.  First, the 4 Ca­na­dian Anti-​tank Regi­ment, who had a party just SOUTH ac­ross the road from RHQ, com­plai­ned to HQ RCA that the 17 Field Regi­ment was fi­ring SA into their area and would they please stop.  They evi­den­tly were not in the pic­ture as to what was hap­pen­ing at all.  The other thing was a re­sult of the Me­dium bat­tery fi­ring at such ranges as 2700.  They were barely clear­ing the houses and trees at that range with their shells when the in­ev­i­ta­ble hap­pened.  The one tall buil­ding in OT­TER­LOO was the church to­wer but it was much too dark for the gun­ners to see it and after re­por­ting “Shot” on one of their nu­mer­ous tar­gets they had to re­port they had removed the church tower.  76 bat­tery fi­nally ran out of SA am­mu­ni­tion and were or­dered to fall back to RHQ where the am­mu­ni­tion was re-​al­lot­ted and the de­fen­ces streng­the­ned by the men from Bat­tery HQ and E troop of 76 bat­tery.  The en­emy came to within 50 yards of RHQ but did not pen­e­trate the pos­i­tion.  RHQ and HQ 4 Anti-​Tank Regi­ment were now cut off from the other units in town and the en­emy went right thro­ugh onto the me­dium guns and the Di­vi­sional HQ but were stop­ped at both places.  Spe­cial men­tion must be given to the Me­dium gun­ners who hav­ing tur­ned in their Tommy guns on leav­ing ITALY had not yet re­ceived their Sten guns.  They fought the en­emy with their bare hands un­til they cap­tured eno­ugh SA to shoot back.  One pa­trol got thro­ugh to 60 bat­tery area, but after a sharp clash with SA and gre­nades they were wiped out after cau­sing some cas­ual­ties.