[2] Following the Maclean Mission and in Tito's meeting with Winston Churchill in Naples in August 1943, British Government policy was to support and supply the Communist partisans.

[6] After a number of successful raiding operations by the British on islands in the Adriatic, the Partisans were impressed by the power of their artillery and began to demand help with its use.

The two commanders travelled via Trebinje, Bileća and Vilusi, to reach Podhan - a strategic location from which they could see and shell the German troops in the town of Risan, Ledenice barracks and in five old Imperial Austrian forts nearby.

[1] The advanced guard of German Army Group E, the XXI Mountain Corps, had already entered Montenegro and used a narrow, meandering road that follows the Bay of Kotor, eventually reaching Risan.

[1] Both the Partisans and the British gunners on the high rock shelf, 1,600 feet above the bay, could see German movements and once the weather had cleared, heavy bombardment started.

[11] By 4 November, the bombardment had been so heavy that an attempt was made to ask Germans to surrender where they were barricaded in a local sawmill and hospital.

579 Field Company of the Royal Engineers gathered the troops and heavy artillery at Nikšić and prepared to demolish the 150 yard-long stone bridge nearby, should the need arise.

On 5 December, Major W. H. Cheesman took a convoy of troops, heavy guns and a detachment of sappers with a flat-packed Bailey bridge to Risan.

They passed the town on 13 December and started bringing artillery forward towards Podgorica and the road to Bioče, German's last remaining route.

This was the last day of British active intervention, and the troops and equipment were brought back to Italy to assist in the campaign[clarification needed] the following month.

"Those were the first shots of the first battle to have been fought by the only British body of formed troops to have soldiered alongside a Communist army on the European mainland during the Second World War.

Winston Churchill thought of this as the key stumbling block and wrote to Tito on 3 December: "You seem to be treating us in an increasingly invidious fashion.

It may be that you have fears that your ambitions about occupying Italian territories of the north Adriatic lead you to view with suspicion and dislike every military operation on your coast we make against the Germans.