page_title: Colin Muir Barber
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Colin Muir Barber / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: The British Army in North-west Europe 1944-45 Major-General C M Barber, GOC of 15th (Scottish) Division in conversation with the crew of an Achilles 17-pdr tank destroyer near Goch, 20 February 1945.
context_page_description: Lieutenant General Sir Colin Muir Barber KBE, CB, DSO & Bar was a senior British Army officer who fought in both World War I and World War II where he commanded the 15th Infantry Division during their actions across Northwest Europe, from August 1944 until Victory in Europe Day in May 1945. Barber was reputed to be the tallest officer in the British Army, and thus earned the ironic nickname "Tiny".
context_section_description: In 1940, during the Second World War, he was with the 51st (Highland) Infantry Division of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France, where he commanded the 4th Battalion, Cameron Highlanders, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and mentioned in dispatches. 
  From March 1941 Barber returned to the General Staff as a GSO1, until taking command, in October, of the 46th (Highland) Infantry Brigade, leading it through the Battle of Normandy in the summer of 1944. From 3 August 1944 Barber, when he was promoted to acting major general, he commanded the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division for the remainder of the campaign in north-west Europe. In this campaign, the 15th Division had the distinction to lead the three great river crossings of the Seine, the Rhine and the Elbe and Barber was awarded the bar to his DSO.
  On 13 November 1945, while acting as representative for the Commander-in-Chief British Army of the Rhine, Barber and the Soviet major-general Nikolay Grigoryevich Lyashchenko (Russian: Николай Григорьевич Лященко) signed the Barber Lyashchenko Agreement ((in German), also Gadebusch Agreement) in Gadebusch, redeploying some municipalities along the northern border between the Soviet and British zone of Allied-occupied Germany. Thus some eastern suburbs of Ratzeburg, such as Ziethen in Lauenburg, Mechow, Bäk and Römnitz became part of the Duchy of Lauenburg District (British zone), while the Lauenburgian municipalities of Dechow, Groß and Klein Thurow (now component parts of Roggendorf) as well as Lassahn (now a component part of Zarrentin am Schaalsee) were ceded to the adjacent Mecklenburgian district (Soviet zone). The redeployment was accomplished on 26 November, the respective occupational forces had to withdraw until 28 November to their new zonal territory. The British occupational forces provided all the inhabitants of villages to be ceded to the Soviet zone to be evacuated, if they wished so, including all their chattels by vehicles provided by the British forces. All displaced people (usually formerly forced labourers under the prior Nazi rule) in these villages and other eventual foreigners – except of Soviet citizens among them – were obligatorily to be relocated, while Soviet displaced people would have to stay.
caption: Major-General C. M. Barber in conversation with the crew of an Achilles 17-pounder tank destroyer near Goch, 20 February 1945.
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