The 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division was an infantry division of the British Army that was formed during the Second World War and fought in the Battle of Normandy. In March 1939, after Germany re-emerged as a significant military power and invaded Czechoslovakia, the British Army increased the number of divisions in the Territorial Army (TA) by duplicating existing units. The 59th (Staffordshire) Motor Division was formed in September 1939, as a second-line duplicate of the 55th (West Lancashire) Motor Division. The division's battalions were all, initially, raised in Staffordshire.
Established using the motor division concept, the division was formed with only two infantry brigades, rather than the usual three for an infantry division, and was fully mobile. The intention was to increase battlefield mobility, enabling the motor divisions to follow armoured forces through breaches in the enemy frontline to rapidly consolidate captured territory. Following the Battle of France, the concept was abandoned. The division was allocated a third infantry brigade, and became the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division. It remained within the United Kingdom until 1944, assigned to anti-invasion and guard duties, while training for combat overseas.
In late June 1944, the division was assigned to the Second Army and transferred to France to take part in the Battle for Normandy. On 7 July, the division saw action in Operation Charnwood, which resulted in the capture of the German-occupied city of Caen. A week later, the division fought in Operation Pomegranate. The territorial goal of this operation was to capture the town of Noyers, which was not accomplished due to determined German resistance. The fighting played an important role in distracting German forces from the major British offensive, Operation Goodwood, which was launched soon after. By late July, the German frontline was crumbling, and a general offensive was launched. The division advanced and captured a bridgehead over the River Orne, fending off several counter-attacks to maintain its hold; during these actions one member of the division earned the Victoria Cross. The division's final combat was a protracted battle to capture the town of Thury-Harcourt. Historians have praised the effort of the division in these battles, during which it suffered several thousand casualties. By August 1944, the British Army was badly short of manpower in many of its units. As the division was the most recently established formation serving within the Second Army in France, and not as a result of its performance, it was chosen to be disbanded and its men transferred to other units to bring them up to strength. The division was broken up on 26 August, and officially disbanded on 19 October 1944.
Background During the 1930s, tensions increased between Germany and the United Kingdom and its allies. In late 1937 and throughout 1938, German demands for the annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia led to an international crisis. To avoid war, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in September and brokered the Munich Agreement. The agreement averted a war and allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland. Although Chamberlain had intended the agreement to lead to further peaceful resolution of issues, relations between both countries soon deteriorated. On 15 March 1939, Germany breached the terms of the agreement by invading and occupying the remnants of the Czech state.
On 29 March, British Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha announced plans to increase the part-time Territorial Army (TA) from 130,000 to 340,000 men and double the number of TA divisions. The plan was for existing TA divisions, referred to as the first-line, to recruit over their establishments (aided by an increase in pay for Territorials, the removal of restrictions on promotion which had hindered recruiting, construction of better-quality barracks and an increase in supper rations) and then form a new division, known as the second-line, from cadres around which the divisions could be expanded. This process was dubbed "duplicating". The 59th Division was to be a second-line unit, a duplicate of the first-line 55th (West Lancashire) Motor Division. In April, limited conscription was introduced. This resulted in 34,500 twenty-year-old militiamen being conscripted into the regular army, initially to be trained for six months before deployment to the forming second-line units. It was envisioned that the duplicating process and recruiting the required numbers of men would take no more than six months. Some TA divisions had made little progress by the time the Second World War began; others were able to complete this work within a matter of weeks.
Formation and home defence On 15 September, the 59th (Staffordshire) Motor Division became active. The division took control of the 176th and the 177th Brigades, as well as divisional support units, which had previously been administered by the 55th (West Lancashire) Motor Division. The 176th Brigade initially consisted of the 7th Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment (7SSR), and the 6th and 7th Battalions, North Staffordshire Regiment (6NSR and 7NSR). When transferred to the division, the 177th Infantry Brigade was made up of the 1/6th, 2/6th, and 5th Battalions, South Staffordshire Regiment (1/6SSR, 2/6SSR, 5SSR). The division was assigned to Western Command, Major-General John Blakiston-Houston becoming the division's first General Officer Commanding (GOC). Blakiston-Houston, who had retired in 1938, was the former Commandant of the Army School of Equitation and the Inspector of Cavalry. To denote the association of the division with the Staffordshire area, where most of the division's battalions were raised, its insignia referred to the Staffordshire coalfields: a black triangle denoting a slag heap, with a pit winding gear tower in red.
The division was formed as a motor division, one of five such divisions in the British Army. British military doctrine development during the inter-war period resulted in three types of division by the end of the 1930s: the infantry division; the mobile division (later called the armoured division); and the motor division. David French, a historian, wrote "The main role of the infantry... was to break into the enemy's defensive position." This would then be exploited by the mobile division, followed by the motor divisions that would "carry out the rapid consolidation of the ground captured by the mobile divisions" therefore "transform[ing] the 'break-in' into a 'break-through'." Per French, the motor division "matched that of the German army's motorized and light divisions. But there the similarities ended." German motorised divisions contained three brigades and were as fully equipped as a regular infantry division, while their smaller light divisions contained a tank battalion. The British motor division, while being fully motorised and capable of transporting all their infantry, was "otherwise much weaker than normal infantry divisions" or their German counterparts as it was made up of only two brigades, had two artillery regiments as opposed to an infantry division's three, and contained no tanks.
The TA's war deployment plan envisioned the divisions being deployed, as equipment became available, to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) already dispatched to Europe. The TA would join regular army divisions in waves as its divisions completed their training, the final divisions deploying a year after the war began. The 59th Division spent the early months of the war training new recruits including conscripts; a task made difficult by the need for the division to provide guards for important locations, and a severe shortage of equipment and trained officers and non-commissioned officers. On 1 December 1939, Major-General Thomas Ralph Eastwood, previously the commandant of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, took command of the division and held this position until May 1940. During this period, the 1/6SSR was the only element of the division to go abroad. It was dispatched to France, while officially remaining part of the division's 177th Brigade, as part of the attempt to address manpower shortages among the BEF's rear-echelon units, and its personnel were utilised in a pioneer capacity digging anti-tank ditches and constructing breastworks. The battalion was caught up in the latter stages of the Battle of France and the withdrawal to Dunkirk harbour; on 2 June, the battalion was evacuated via the harbour's mole. The rest of the division was not deployed, and as a result of the evacuation was not deployed to France per the original deployment timeline.
In May, Eastwood was selected by Lieutenant-General Alan Brooke for a staff role within the Second BEF and was replaced by Major-General Frederick Witts, who arrived from a General Staff position. As soon as the Battle of France ended, the British Army began implementing lessons learnt from the campaign. This included a decision that the standard division would be based around three brigades, and the abandonment of the motor division concept. This process involved the break up of four second-line territorial divisions to reinforce depleted formations and aid in transforming the Army's five motor divisions, each made up of two brigades, into infantry divisions made up of three brigades. As part of this process, on 23 June, the 66th Infantry Division was disbanded. This freed up the 197th Infantry Brigade and an artillery regiment to be transferred to the 59th (Staffordshire) Motor Division, which became the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division.
During June, the division moved to defend the Humber estuary and was deployed in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, assigned to Northern Command, before joining the newly formed XCorps on 24 June. The division alternated between anti-invasion and beach defence duties against a potential German invasion, and training for offensive operations. Priority for new equipment was given to a handful of formations in Southern England that would launch the riposte to any German landing. The 59th Division, at the end of May 1940, was short of equipment and had to requisition civilian transport. On paper, an infantry division was to have seventy-two 25-pounder field guns, but the 59th was only equipped with four First World War-vintage 18-pounder field guns and seven howitzers of similar vintage. Furthermore, the division had no anti-tank guns against a nominal establishment of 48. As the year progressed, the British Army raised 140 infantry battalions. In October, these battalions were formed into independent infantry brigades for static beach defence. Several brigades were assigned to Northern Command, which allowed the 59th Division to be relieved of its defensive role and begin brigade and division exercises.
On 15 February 1941, Witts was replaced by newly promoted Major-General James Steele (who had commanded the 132nd Brigade during the Battle of France). On 20 June, Brooke, now Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, inspected the division and left highly satisfied, believing the men possessed an "eagerness in the eyes". Brooke recorded in his diary, "Spent day inspecting 59th Div, which has made great progress during the last year". Intensive training began and new equipment started to arrive; in September the division joined IXCorps as a mobile reserve, behind the Durham and North Riding County Division, the corps' static beach defence formation.