page_title: 55th (West Lancashire) Infantry Division
section_title: Home defence
hierarchical_section_title: 55th (West Lancashire) Infantry Division / Second World War / Home defence
caption_attribution_description: English: IWM caption&#160;: THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 1939-45 A woman watches Universal carriers of the 9th Battalion, King's Regiment moving through a Sussex village.
context_page_description: The 55th (West Lancashire) Infantry Division was an infantry division of the British Army's Territorial Army. It raised in 1908 as the West Lancashire Division, part of the British Army's Territorial Force. It fought in the First World War, and demobilised following the fighting. It was refounded as the 55th (West Lancashire) Division in 1920, when the TF was reconstituted as the TA. The divison was stationed in the county of Lancashire throughout the 1920s and 1930s, under-funded and under-staffed. In the late 1930s, the division was reduced from three to two infantry brigades and gave up some artillery and other support units to become a motorised formation, the 55th (West Lancashire) Motor Division. The was part of a British Army doctrine change, which intended to increase battlefield mobility.
  Following the German occupation of Czechoslovakia, the division created new units around cadres of its own personnel; a process called duplicating. The division then used these new formations to create its duplicate, the 59th Motor Division. The 55th remained in the United Kingdom, in a defensive role, after the outbreak of the Second World War.
context_section_description: By the outbreak of the war, the 55th Division had reformed the 164th Brigade. On 4 September, the division established the second line duplicate of the 166th Brigade, the 177th. On 15 September, the 166th Infantry Brigade (renamed the 176th Infantry Brigade) and the 177th Brigade were transferred to the 59th (Staffordshire) Motor Division. This left the 55th Division with the 164th Brigade (with the 9th Battalion, King's Regiment (Liverpool), the 1/4th Battalion, the South Lancashire Regiment, and the 2/4th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment, and the 165th Brigade (with the 5th Battalion, King's Regiment (Liverpool), and the 1st and the 2nd Battalions, Liverpool Scottish (Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders)). The division's GOC was Major-General Vivian Majendie, who had been in command since 1938. The division's initial duties included deploying guards to the docks at Birkenhead, the Port of Liverpool, and the naval defences at Crosby, while also assisting the civilian authorities during air raids. On 6 September, the division fired its first shots of the war. Divisional anti-aircraft and machine guns fired on three aircraft flying low over the River Mersey. The shots missed, and the aircraft were later determined to be Royal Air Force Handley Page Hampdens.
  The war deployment plan for the TA envisioned its divisions being sent overseas, as equipment became available, to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that had already been 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. However, in October 1939, the Commander-in-Chief, Home Forces, General Walter Kirke, was tasked with drawing up a plan, codenamed Julius Caesar, to defend the United Kingdom from a potential German invasion. As part of this plan, the division was assigned to Home Forces' reserve. It was transferred to Northern Command and moved to Charnwood Forest in Leicestershire. Here the division furthered its training, while also having to be ready to act as a counter-attack force for Julius Caesar in case of a German invasion between the Humber and The Wash. Additional duties included the protection of RAF Finningley.
  In January 1940, the division was used to obtain drafts for formations overseas as well as volunteers to man anti-aircraft guns on small ships. In March, the division was relieved as a reserve formation. It was assigned to Eastern Command the following month, and transferred to defend the coastline of Suffolk and then Essex. These moves were part of a larger effort by Kirke to reinforce the defences in the East of England, which he believed would be the location most in danger of an invasion as a result of the German operations on mainland Europe. Other than coastal defence, the division was also responsible for providing mobile detachments to hunt down any German airborne landings, guard Ipswich Airport, and construct roadblocks inland from potential invasion beaches. In April, following the start of the Norwegian campaign, the division organised No. 4 Independent Company, which departed for Norway on 7 May 1940. Following the conclusion of that campaign, many of these men joined the Commandos. As a result of the German victory in France and the return of the BEF following the Dunkirk evacuation, the division was not deployed overseas per the original TA deployment timeline.
  The British Army began implementing lessons learnt from the campaign in France in mid-1940. This included a decision to base the standard division 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 199th Infantry Brigade and an artillery regiment to be transferred to the 55th Divis
caption: Universal Carriers of the 9th Battalion, King's Regiment (Liverpool), of the 164th Brigade, moving through a Sussex village, 3 July 1941.
exif: {}