12th (Eastern) Infantry Division
The 12th Infantry Division was an infantry division of the British Army, which fought briefly in the Battle of France during the Second World War. In March 1939, after the re-emergence of Germany as a European power and its occupation of Czechoslovakia, the British Army increased the number of divisions within the Territorial Army by duplicating existing units. The 12th Infantry Division was formed in October 1939, as a second-line duplicate of the 44th Infantry Division.
It was transferred to France in 1940, and became engaged in the Battle of France. Following the Dunkirk evacuation, the division was disbanded due to casualties, and its units were transferred to other formations to bring them up to strength.
Background
During the 1930s, tensions increased between Germany and the United Kingdom and its allies. In late 1937 and throughout 1938, German demands for the annexation of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia led to an international crisis. To avoid war, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler in September and brokered the Munich Agreement. The agreement averted a war and allowed Germany to annexe the Sudetenland. Although Chamberlain had intended the agreement to lead to further peaceful resolution of issues, relations between both countries soon deteriorated. On 15 March 1939, Germany breached the terms of the agreement by invading and occupying the remnants of the Czech state.On 29 March, British Secretary of State for War Leslie Hore-Belisha announced plans to increase the part-time Territorial Army from 130,000 to 340,000 men and double the number of TA divisions. The plan was for existing TA divisions, referred to as the first-line, to recruit over their establishments and then form a new division, known as the second-line, from cadres around which the divisions could be expanded. This process was dubbed "duplicating". The 12th Infantry Division was to be a second-line unit, a duplicate of the first-line 44th Infantry Division. In April, limited conscription was introduced. This resulted in 34,500 twenty-year-old militiamen being conscripted into the regular army, initially to be trained for six months before deployment to the forming second-line units. It was envisioned that the duplicating process and recruiting the required numbers of men would take no more than six months. Some TA divisions had made little progress by the time the Second World War began; others were able to complete this work within a matter of weeks.
Service in France and Dunkirk
Between 3 September, the day the war officially began, and 7 October 1939 the units of the 12th Division were administered by the 44th Division, until its brigade and division headquarters were formed, both divisions came under Eastern Command.The 12th Infantry Division came under direct control of the War Office on 18 April 1940 and was preparing to move to France. Four days later, on 22 April 1940, the 12th Infantry Division landed in France, commanded by Major-General Roderic Loraine Petre, DSO, MC, followed by the 23rd Division and 46th Infantry Division, both of which were also 2nd Line units, were sent as lines of communications troops to France to join the British Expeditionary Force. All three divisions were under-equipped and did not have their signals, artillery or administrative units with them. As such, the 'division' contained mostly half trained units, some of whom had not even fired their rifles, and as a result were very poorly trained.
When the German Army launched their attack in the West on 10 May 1940, only every third battalion had done a week's training. As a result, the 12th Division suffered heavy casualties during the Battle of France and the subsequent retreat to and evacuation from Dunkirk.
Disbandment
As soon as the Allied troops returned from France, the British Army began implementing lessons learnt from the campaign. This involved the decision to abandon the two-brigade motor division concept and for the basic infantry division to be based around three brigades. This process involved the break up of four second-line TA divisions to reinforce depleted formations and aid in transforming the Army's five motor divisions into infantry divisions. This included disbanding the 12th Infantry Division, which occurred on 11 July, when its units were dispersed.The 35th Infantry Brigade was transferred to the 1st London Division, a motor formation. The arrival of the brigade was part of the division's re-organisation into an infantry division. With little change to the composition of the brigade, it would go on to fight in the Italian Campaign between 1943 and 1945. The 36th Infantry Brigade was briefly attached to the 2nd London Division, before becoming an independent infantry brigade directly under the command of either the War Office or Corps-level formations. It was eventually transferred to the 78th Infantry Division, and the brigade fought in the North African Campaign in 1942, the invasion of Sicily in 1943, and in the Italian Campaign from 1943 through to the end of the war. The 37th Infantry Brigade became an independent formation under Corps level commands. It was re-designated the 7th Infantry Brigade in 1941, before being assigned to a variety of divisions based in the United Kingdom throughout the rest of the war. The 114th Field Regiment also joined the 2nd London Division, and stayed with the division until the end of 1941. It later was transferred to the 20th Indian Infantry Division, and fought in the Burma Campaign, and in particular the Battle of Imphal. The 118th Field Regiment was transferred 18th Infantry Division, and surrendered to the Empire of Japan following the Battle of Singapore. The division's engineers became the XII Corps Troops, Royal Engineers and served as part of British Second Army in North-western Europe from July 1944 until May 1945. 12th Divisional Signals, Royal Corps of Signals was disbanded, with the men being sent to the Middle East, joining 3 Lines of Communications Signals, Sudan Signals, or remained based in the United Kingdom as part of Home Counties District Signals and 1 Army Signal Training Regiment.