He trained the division in England for the next 21 months, leading it with great success during Operation Overlord, codename for the Allied invasion of Normandy, in the summer of 1944. His 53rd Division sustained heavy casualties in the Battle for Caen and the battles that followed, but by the end of the campaign in Normandy had captured some 3,500 German troops as prisoners of war (POWs). The division then, in the aftermath of the Battle of Falaise (where Captain Tasker Watkins of the 1/5th Battalion, Welch Regiment was awarded the division's only Victoria Cross of the war), took part in the pursuit of the retreating German forces during the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine, entering the Netherlands and playing a relatively minor role in Operation Market Garden, capturing the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, later being one of the few British divisions to play a part in the Battle of the Bulge. In February 1945 the division played a significant role in Operation Veritable (Battle of the Reichswald), later crossing the River Rhine in March and taking part in the Western Allied invasion of Germany, eventually ending the war in Hamburg in May. He continued to command the division in the Allied occupation of Germany. Ross was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) on 1 February 1945.