After the brigade was relieved by 9th Indian Infantry Brigade in mid-November, it readied for the Battle of Keren. For his heroism, he was recommended for a Military Cross, but this was downgraded to a Mentioned in dispatches. Bhagat dashed out from under cover and with bullets flying all around him, detonated the remaining explosives and collapsed the culvert. The charges were detonated, but one tank failed to explode and the culvert did not collapse. At one stage, two broken-down tanks were filled with explosives and placed on a culvert to collapse it and halt the enemy. The Sappers were tasked with obstructing the enemy to prevent them from following too closely. While Gallabat was captured, an enemy counter-attack forced the brigade to withdraw. Slim launched an attack on the fort of Gallabat, with the assault spearheaded by the 3rd Royal Garhwal Rifles under Lieutenant-Colonel S.E. The 10th Infantry Brigade was commanded by Brigadier William Slim, MC (later Field Marshal the Viscount Slim). On 23 September 1940, Bhagat's company was sent to East Africa as part of the 10th Indian Infantry Brigade, 5th Indian Division, Sudan Defence Force under the overall command of Lieutenant General William Platt. He was posted to the 21 Field Company of Engineers at Pune in September, shortly after war began in Europe. Bhagat applied himself to his studies in his final year and was commissioned in the British Indian Army on 15 July 1939 as a Second lieutenant (2Lt.) in the Royal Bombay Sappers and Miners. In January 1938, Surendra Singh Bhagat died in a riding accident in Varanasi.
While noted by his instructors as an intelligent all-round sportsman, he was also described as a careless student. As a gentleman cadet, Bhagat captained the academy tennis and squash teams.
In June 1937, he entered the Indian Military Academy. In 1930, he entered the Royal Indian Military College, a military school in Dehradun, where he was an average student. Bhagat was born on 13 October 1918 in Gorakhpur, British India to Surendra Singh Bhagat, an executive engineer in the provincial government of the then United Provinces.
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