make error on examples

I get
make: *** [begin] Error 1
when I try to run make from an example on WinARM.
With
SHELL = sh
it looks like it doesn't like the @echo - echo works fine.
If I comment out the SHELL = sh,
the @echo works but the make then error exits on
@if [ -f $(TARGET).elf ]; then echo test one;else echo nope;fi

as a simple example, the following gets the same error
# start
SHELL = sh

:all begin

begin:
  echo hello
  @echo hello

I expect it is something with the SHELL command
but I've even set SHELL to
SHELL = C:/WinARM/utils/bin/sh.exe
with the same results.

What do I need to do?