If all British Infantry Divisions were trained to the same level what was wrong with 44th Div which lead to it's breaking up and it's units sent to various other formations? It's something that's been bugging me for awhile. 44th (Home Counties) Infantry Division - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Interesting question mate. When you made your post I assumed that it was broken up in Normandy to provide replacements for other units but having read your link it appears to have be disbanded much earlier.
It formed badly at Alam Halfa. But why..... It had seen action in France 1940 so thought as it had already been bloodied it would have been a good fighting formation.
Owen - I think the main problem with the 44th Div was it arrived very late from the UK for the battle of Alam Halfa - and was not trained to Monty's ways - and suffered - as a result Monty was not too pleased with them.....then a short training session and actions to El Alamein really sealed their fate..and thus were broken up .... Same thing nearly happened to 56th Div when they arrived in Tunisia from Palestine as they also performed badly at Enfidaville..De Guingand was sent down to "smarten" them up - they were finally transferred to 10th Corps for the Salerno landings along with the 1st Army's 46th Div and just remnants of 7th Armoured Div. 56th Div didn't show up in 8th Army until the Gothic Line - Monty was long gone by then and both Leese followed by MCCreery were in command.... Monty was a stickler for realistic training - as is well known ref :- Nigel Hamilton's " Monty - Master of the Battlefield" Vol 2 - and Tom Canning's sight of the 56th Div at Coriano Ridge Sept '44 Cheers
So was the problem with the Divisional Staff rather than the men ? The two Brigades attached to the Armoured Divs seemed to do quite well. 131 Bde did rather well for themselves. 50th & 51st Divs did well in the Desert so I wonder what 44th Div's problem was.
Owen / Paul The 50th and 51st had commanders who listened to Monty - perhaps the Commander of the 44th didn't - thus had to go - and the break up the division for spares after the loss of 13,000 after Alemein, was inevitable. In the case of the 56th their Commander I think - was Gen. Allfrey - who must have listened to Monty as he was soon up to Corps Commander in Italy - who still got a rocket at the Sangro. Monty was hated in many quarters for firing Colonels - quite right in other quarters - as one visit to a battalion he asked the Colonel who did the training - to be advised that the 2 i/c handled all that - on meeting the 2 i/c later - he asked the same question to be told that the Colonel handled all that - the Colonel was replaced that same day ! Now would you rather be led by a man who was on the ball - or still thought it was all a pre war game ? Cheers
Owen / Paul The 50th and 51st had commanders who listened to Monty - perhaps the Commander of the 44th didn't - thus had to go - and the break up the division for spares after the loss of 13,000 after Alemein, was inevitable. Cheers This figure for the 9th division shocked me years ago when I first saw it. The Battle of El Alamein was the last great imperial battle. More than 13,500 men in the Eighth Army were killed, wounded or missing including 2,694 Australians from the 9th Division, approximately one-fifth of the Eighth Army's total casualties.
Spidge - 20% casualties is not too surprising for the 9th Australians as they were leading the charge at the thumb - even before the heavy mob(21st panzers) came up from the south...... Would have to query the "last Imperial battle" though - it certainly was the last battle that any Australian formation was involved with in that theatre...... BUT we did have the Indians 3 divs - Kiwi's - Canadians 2 Divs in Italy for a few battles like the Sangro - Cassino - Liri Valley - Gothic Line - Spring push et al. The 4th Indian - Kiwi's took a tremendous beating at Cassino - they were never quite the same afterwards - as had the Canadians at Ortona.... Then there were the 46th and 56th Divs at Salerno and the Garigliano as well as Anzio - along with the 78th at the Sangro - Termoli - Cassino and the Liri valley - they had to go back to Egypt to rest and reform after their casualties So as I say - 20% wasn't all that unusual ! Cheers
My take is that it fought in penny packets during their first round in N.Africa, and that without the proper seasoning. If it was held back for as long as the 51st HD and fought as a division it might have been a different story. Both the 131 and 133bde. did splendid during the war.
