1st Armoured Division ( Poland ) The Polish 1st Armoured Division ( Polish " 1 Dywizja Pancerna " ) was an Allied military unit during World War II , created in February 1942 at Duns in Scotland . At its peak it numbered approximately 16 , 000 soldiers . It was commanded by General Stanisław Maczek . History . The division was formed as part of the I Polish Corps . In the early stages the division was stationed in Scotland and guarded approximately 200 kilometres of British coast . In UK , it participated in war games together with the 4th Canadian ( Armoured ) Division , and in France , Low Countries , and Germany , both divisions followed very close paths . This might have been done to help in communication ( vast majority of Poles did not speak English when they arrived in UK in 1940 , 1941 , and 1942 ) . Normandy . By the end of July 1944 the division had been transferred to Normandy . The final elements arrived on August 1 and the unit was attached to the First Canadian Army . It entered combat on August 8 during Operation Totalize . The division twice suffered serious bombings by Allied aircraft which accidentally bombed friendly troops , but yet it achieved a victory against the Wehrmacht in the battles for Mont Ormel , and the town of Chambois . This series of offensive and defensive operations came to be known as the Battle of Falaise in which a large number of German Wehrmacht and SS divisions were trapped in the Falaise pocket and subsequently destroyed . Maczek ' s division had the crucial role of closing the pocket at the escape route of those German divisions , hence the fighting was absolutely desperate and the 2nd Polish Armoured Regiment , 24th Polish Lancers and 10th Dragoons supported by the 8th and 9th Infantry Battalions took the brunt of German attacks trying to break free from the pocket . Surrounded and running out of ammunition they withstood incessant attacks from multiple fleeing panzer divisions for 48 hours until they were relieved . Belgium and the Netherlands . After the Allied armies broke out from Normandy , the Polish 1st Armoured Division pursued the Germans along the coast of the English Channel . It liberated , among others , the towns of Saint - Omer , Ypres , Ghent and Passchendaele . A successful outflanking manoeuvre planned and performed by General Maczek allowed the liberation of the city of Breda without any civilian casualties ( October 29 , 1944 ) . The Division spent the winter of 1944 - 1945 on the south bank of the river Rhine , guarding a sector around Moerdijk , Netherlands . In early 1945 it was transferred to the province of Overijssel and started to push along with the Allies along the Dutch - German border , liberating the eastern parts of the provinces of Drenthe and Groningen with towns such as Emmen , Coevorden and Stadskanaal . Germany . In April 1945 the 1st Armoured entered Germany in the area of Emsland . On May 6 the division seized the Kriegsmarine naval base in Wilhelmshaven , where General Maczek accepted the capitulation of the fortress , naval base , East Frisian Fleet and more than 10 infantry divisions . There the Division ended the war and was joined by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade . It undertook occupation duties until 1947 , when the division was disbanded , it and the many Polish displaced persons in the Western occupied territories forming a Polish enclave at Haren in Germany which was for a while known as " Maczków " . The majority of its soldiers opted not to return to now Soviet occupied Poland and stayed in exile . Organization during 1944 - 45 . 1st Armoured Division - General Stanisław Maczek - comprising : - Dramatization . The division is the subject of a ' Polish campaign ' in the best - selling Call of Duty 3 video game . The PS2 version included an interview with a veteran .