The British left a garrison in Tobruk, which was expected to be strong enough to hold the port while the Eighth Army regrouped and replaced its losses.

There was no time to mount a defence and the Eighth Army lacked the armour to defend the open southern end of the position.

[5] British rearguards tried to destroy the fuel and ammunition dumped at the frontier and then Gott withdrew without engaging the Panzerarmee Afrika.

Rommel pushed on unopposed through the night and the next day, meeting no resistance from British ground forces but increasing attack from the air.

The Desert Air Force was growing in strength and operating nearer to its bases, while the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica were receding from theirs.

Auchinleck was preparing defences there but a mobile defensive battle was to be fought from Mersa Matruh to the El Alamein gap.

He shifted transport to enable the infantry formations in XIII Corps to be fully motorised and stressed that the Eighth Army forces fighting at Mersa Matruh must not allow themselves to be cut off.

[18] Mersa Matruh had been fortified in 1940 before the Italian invasion of Egypt in 1940 and was further strengthened during the build-up for Operation Crusader and was the last coastal fortress in Allied possession.

[14][6] Having dealt the British armoured forces a heavy blow at Gazala, he looked to destroy much of their infantry by trapping them in Mersa Matruh.

[1] Between the corps was a plain bounded by the escarpments, where a thin minefield had been laid, screened by Gleecol and Leathercol from the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade.

At Matruh the Eighth Army units were far stronger than the German and Italians but their effectiveness was reduced by conflicting objectives.

[29][30] At midday on 27 June, Auchinleck sent a message to his two corps commanders indicating that if they were threatened with being cut off they were to retire rather than risk encirclement and destruction.

[31][32][33] With the line of retreat of the 2nd New Zealand Division cut, Gott decided to withdraw that night and notified the Eighth Army.

[26][30] Gott relayed his intention to the Eighth Army, planning to take up a second delaying position at Fuka, about 30 mi (48 km) east of Matruh.

With fixed bayonets, the 4th NZ Brigade drove down the Minqar Qaim track directly upon the positions of a panzergrenadier battalion of the 21st Panzer Division.

While this attack was underway Inglis grew concerned over the delay and the approaching dawn, deciding to take the rest of the division by a different route.

[32] Auchinleck made it clear that X Corps was not to attempt to hold out in its defensive positions and he thought there was no point to try to fight east along the coast road.

[45] The 29th Indian Infantry Brigade arrived at the regrouping point at Fuka late in the afternoon of 28 June, followed by the 21st Panzer Division.

On June 29, the 7th Bersaglieri Regiment entered the stronghold and accepted the surrender of 6,000 British troops and captured a great deal of supplies and equipment.

[46][47] The 90th Light Division was allowed no time to rest and quickly sent down the coast road after the retreating Eighth Army.

An entry in the 90th Light War Diary rued "After all our days of hard fighting, we did not get a chance to rest or bathe in the ocean".

[49] The columns sometimes exchanged fire and as most of the Panzerarmee transport was captured British or American equipment, it was often difficult to distinguish friend from foe.

[49] The fight at Matruh took its character from the disposition of the Eighth Army forces, Rommel's misunderstanding of them and the chronic lack of co-ordination between British infantry and armoured units.

[33] Friedrich von Mellenthin, Rommel's intelligence officer during the battle, commented "As a result of Auchinleck’s hesitation, the British not only lost a great opportunity of destroying the Panzerarmee but suffered a serious defeat, which might easily have turned into an irretrievable disaster.

[1] Following its escape from Matruh, X Corps were scattered, badly disorganised and withdrawn to the Nile as "Delta Force", unable to participate in the early part of the First Battle of El Alamein.

[53] People fled east to Palestine and the air of Cairo was thick with the smoke of burning official and secret documents ("Ash Wednesday").

[33] The British army flooded sections of the Nile Delta, prepared to demolish infrastructure and built up defensive positions at Alexandria and the Suez canal.

[55] Mellenthin wrote Rommel may have been lucky, but Mersa Matruh was certainly a brilliant German victory and gave us great hopes of 'bouncing' the Eighth Army out of the Alamein line.

When it died down both sides were exhausted, but the British were still in possession of the vital ground.The Allied crisis passed and the Eighth Army began to build up its strength in preparation for going back onto the offensive.

The battle also functioned as a large morale-booster for Rommel's Italian troops, as it had been predominantly executed by them, albeit under German command.