The 9th Armoured Brigade was a

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

brigade formed during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. The 9th Armoured Brigade was formed by the redesignation of the 4th Cavalry Brigade, a 1st Line

Yeomanry Yeomanry is a designation used by a number of units or sub-units of the British Army Reserve, descended from volunteer cavalry regiments. Today, Yeomanry units serve in a variety of different military roles. History Origins In the 1790s, f ...

(mounted) brigade in the Territorial Army, which had been part of the 1st Cavalry Division. It was converted to an armoured role on 3 August 1941 in the Middle East, and joined the

10th Armoured Division 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

Second World War

El Alamein

During the North Africa campaign, the Brigade was commanded by Brigadier J.C.Currie and fought at the

Second Battle of El Alamein The Second Battle of El Alamein (23 October – 11 November 1942) was a battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. The First Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Alam el Halfa had prevented th ...

. Its units were: The British Army in Italy 1944 NA16755

3rd Hussars The 3rd (The King's Own) Hussars was a cavalry regiment of the British Army, first raised in 1685. It saw service for three centuries, including the First and the Second World Wars, before being amalgamated with the 7th Queen's Own Hussars, t ...

Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry The Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry (RWY) was a Yeomanry regiment of the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom established in 1794. It was disbanded as an independent Army Reserve (United Kingdom), Territorial Army unit in 1967, a time when t ...

Warwickshire Yeomanry The Warwickshire Yeomanry was a yeomanry regiment of the British Army, first raised in 1794, which served as cavalry and machine gunners in the First World War and as a cavalry and an armoured regiment in the Second World War, before being amalg ...

9th Armoured Brigade Signal Squadron (Middlesex Yeomanry) The Middlesex Yeomanry was a volunteer cavalry regiment of the British Army originally raised in 1797. It saw mounted and dismounted action in the Second Boer War and in World War I at Gallipoli, Salonika and in Palestine, where one of its offic ...

Royal Corps of Signals The Royal Corps of Signals (often simply known as the Royal Signals – abbreviated to R SIGNALS or R SIGS) is one of the combat support arms of the British Army. Signals units are among the first into action, providing the battlefield commun ...

The Brigade was nominally independent, but was placed under command of the

2nd New Zealand Division The 2nd New Zealand Division, initially the New Zealand Division, was an infantry division of the New Zealand Military Forces (New Zealand's army) during the Second World War. The division was commanded for most of its existence by Lieutenant ...

specifically for the

El Alamein El Alamein ( ar, العلمين, translit=al-ʿAlamayn, lit=the two flags, ) is a town in the northern Matrouh Governorate of Egypt. Located on the Arab's Gulf, Mediterranean Sea, it lies west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. , it had ...

battle. Following permission given by the New Zealanders, they proudly painted the Kiwis' divisional sign on their tanks. The NZ infantry gained their objectives, but as with Operation ''Lightfoot'' on the first day of the battle, lanes could not be cleared through the minefields until night was almost over. 9th Armoured Brigade was forced to make its attack silhouetted by the early daylight. As dawn came on 2 November, tank after tank was hit by the German 88 mm guns that kept firing through seven air attacks. The 9th never reached their objective. In fact, they took 75 percent casualties and lost 102 of their 128 tanks. Nevertheless, they breached the gun line and the 1st Armoured Division of

X Corps 10th Corps, Tenth Corps, or X Corps may refer to: France * 10th Army Corps (France) * X Corps (Grande Armée), a unit of the Imperial French Army during the Napoleonic Wars Germany * X Corps (German Empire), a unit of the Imperial German Army * X ...

, under the command of Raymond Briggs, was now able to engage. After the Brigade's action, Brigadier William Gentry of the 6th New Zealand Brigade went ahead to survey the scene. On seeing Brigadier Currie asleep on a stretcher, he approached him saying, 'Sorry to wake you John, but I'd like to know where your tanks are?' Currie waved his hand at a group of tanks around him, replying 'There they are.' Gentry was puzzled. 'I don't mean your headquarters tanks, I mean your armoured regiments. Where are they?' Currie waved his arm and again replied, 'There are my armoured regiments, Bill.' Nevertheless, the assault of 2nd New Zealand Division had drawn in both 15 and 21 Panzer Divisions, with the result that there was a wide gap in the Axis lines to the south west. Through this gap, Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery, commander of 8th Army, pushed the remainder of his armour, breaking the ''Afrika Korps'' line and pushing westwards into its rear areas and supply lines. By 4 November, the battle was won and Montgomery was entertaining the captured Afrika Korps commander, Wilhelm von Thoma, to dinner in his caravan. In an account of the battle published to mark its 25th anniversary, Montgomery wrote:

I must mention the magnificent fight put up by 9th Armoured Brigade - 3rd Hussars, Wiltshire Yeomanry, Warwickshire Yeomanry.... If the British armour owed any debt to the infantry of 8th army, the debt was paid on 2 November by 9th Armoured Brigade in heroism and blood....

General

Bernard Freyberg Lieutenant-General Bernard Cyril Freyberg, 1st Baron Freyberg, (21 March 1889 – 4 July 1963) was a British-born New Zealand soldier and Victoria Cross recipient, who served as the 7th Governor-General of New Zealand from 1946 to 1952. Frey ...

, the NZ Division's commander, also paid tribute to the gallant support provided by the brigade.

Post Alamein

After the battle, the 9th Armoured Brigade, which had been reduced to a handful of operational tanks, was withdrawn to Syria to regroup and undertake internal security duties. In 1944, the Brigade (with the same three constituent Regiments) fought in the Italian campaign in support of the British 78th, 4th Indian and

10th Indian Infantry Division The 10th Indian Infantry Division was a war formed infantry division of the Indian Army during World War II. In four years, the division travelled over from Tehran to Trieste, fought three small wars, and fought two great campaigns: ...

Post War

After the reformation of the Territorial Army in 1947, the brigade was reformed as an independent formation within Northern Command. It was almost certainly disbanded by the time that the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve was formed in 1967.

Notes

References

*Graham Watson
United Kingdom: The Territorial Army 1947
v 1.0, 10 March 2002 *