Given the acting rank of major general, unusual for someone still under the age of forty, Ward became the General Officer Commanding of the 4th Infantry Division, one of the four pre-war Regular Army divisions, in April 1944. This made Ward, at the time, one of the youngest division commanders in the British Army (only George Roberts and Richard Hull were younger). The division, composed of the 10th, 12th and 28th Infantry Brigades along with supporting divisional troops, had only recently arrived in Italy from Egypt, where it had been refitting since the end of the Tunisian campaign in mid-May 1943 and had to be rapidly prepared and brought to peak fitness.