TUESDAY’S APPEAL for information on The Black Watch memorial photograph submitted by Scott Brown of Carnoustie produced a wealth of responses.

Major Ronnie Proctor of The Black Watch Musuem in Perth identified it as the memorial to the 35 officers and 300 men of the 2nd Battalion killed or wounded on the break-out of Tobruk, Libya, on November 18, 1941.

He said it is situated at the gates of what became known as The Black Watch cemetery. In the war years it was little more than a cairn but was built into a permanent memorial at the end of hostilities.

Major Proctor said the nearby RAF airbase mentioned by Mr Brown is El-Adem, a spelling which George Smith of St Andrews disagrees with.

Mr Smith was posted to north Africa with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at the end of the war and was adjutant in charge of German prisoner of war camps.

He recalls that 20,000 German prisoners ran the camps themselves with only administration conducted by the British.

Mr Smith said he believes the RAF staging post was called El-Adam but El-Adem may also have been used by Arabic translators.

Ex-RAF man, George Cockerill of Carnoustie, said El-Adam was about 20 miles south of Tobruk.In the early 1960s, said Mr Cockerill, the station served as a staging post between Cyprus and Aden.

George Kelly, Burghmuir Road, Perth, who was based in Libya with the REME, said he recalled a German war memorial, a Free French cemetery and also The Black Watch cemetery.