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Lewis Lyne

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Allegiance
  
United Kingdom

Name
  
Lewis Lyne

Rank
  
Major-general

Battles/wars
  
World War II

Service/branch
  
British Army

Unit
  
Lancashire Fusiliers

Battles and wars
  
World War II

Years of service
  
1921 - 1949

Died
  
1970


Lewis Lyne

Commands held
  
9th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers 169th (London) Infantry Brigade 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division 7th Armoured Division British Forces in Berlin British Troops Egypt

Awards
  
Order of the Bath, Distinguished Service Order

Major-General Lewis Owen Lyne CB DSO (21 August 1899 – 4 November 1970) was a senior officer of the British Army who served before and during the Second World War. During the war he saw distinguished active service in command of a brigade, then several divisions.

Contents

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Early life and military career

Born on 21 August 1899 in Newport, Wales, the second son of Charles Lyne, Lyne was educated at the Haileybury and Imperial Service College. Too young to see service during the First World War, Lyne joined the British Army and was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant into the Lancashire Fusiliers. After the war he gained a Regular commission in August 1921. Posted to the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, he spent most of the interwar period serving with the battalion in various parts of the world, including Ireland, Egypt, Gibraltar and China. After returning to England to attend the Staff College, Camberley from 1935–1936, he became a staff officer at the War Office in 1938 until the outbreak of war.

Second World War

By the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Lyne, by now a major, was Deputy Assistant Military Secretary at the War Office, and in November, was promoted to Assistant Military Secretary, where he was responsible for the minor details of officer appointments. In June 1940, after the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated from Dunkirk, Lyne, with a small cadre of Regulars, was appointed Commanding Officer (CO) of the 9th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers in Bury, a war service battalion, composed largely of conscripts. In October the battalion became part of the 208th Independent Infantry Brigade (Home) but soon transferred to the 125th Infantry Brigade of the 42nd (East Lancashire) Infantry Division, then commanded by Major-General Henry Willcox, which had fought with distinction in France with the BEF, and was now stationed in East Anglia on anti-invasion duties. In late June 1941, after commanding his battalion for over a year, he went on to be Chief Instructor at the Senior Officers' School, Sheerness. The school was then focused on preparing relatively junior officers, mainly majors, for the command of battalions and regiments.

Promoted to brigadier in March 1942, he was given command of the 169th (London) Infantry Brigade, part of the 56th (London) Infantry Division, then commanded by Major General Eric Miles. The brigade, known as the "Queen's Brigade" as it contained three second-line Territorial Army (TA) battalions of the Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey), had formerly been the 35th Infantry Brigade and had served with the BEF before, in July 1940, joining the 56th Division, which was then the 1st London Division before being redesignated 56th Division in November. The 169th Brigade was one of three which constituted the 56th Division, the other two being the 167th and 168th, along with supporting units. In June, three months after taking command, the division was ordered to mobilise for service overseas and left England in August, arriving in Iraq in November 1942. The division formed part of Indian XXI Corps of the Tenth Army, which was given the role of preventing the Germans from reaching the Persian Gulf from the Caucasus. However, the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, the threat receded and the 56th Division could focus its attention on training for offensive operations, and began training in mountain warfare. In March, the division (minus the 168th Brigade) was ordered to join the British Eighth Army, then fighting in final stages of the Tunisian Campaign. The two brigades of the division then began a 3,200 mile journey from Kirkup to Enfidaville, Tunisia. The journey took four weeks and is the longest approach march in the history of the British Army.

Arriving there in late April, Lyne's brigade began to relieve elements of the veteran 2nd New Zealand Division, in contact with the enemy, in the mountains north of Enfidaville on the night of 26 April. Two days later, the X Corps (which the 56th Division formed part of) commander, Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, ordered the brigade to seize Djebel Srafi and Djebel Terhouna. Although the attack began well, a counterattack on the first objective sent men of the 2/5th Queen's who were there back to their own start lines, which did not make a good startbto the brigade's war service. However, the campaign was finished just over two weeks later, with most of the Allied strength being diverted to the British First Army, with Tunis falling to elements of the First Army on 7 May, and the campaign officially ending on 13 May 1943, with some 238,000 Axis soldiers surrendering.

With the campaign over, the division (still minus the 168th Brigade), now with Major-General Douglas Graham as its General Officer Commanding (GOC) after Miles was severely injured on 5 May, was sent to Libya to train for amphibious operations in preparation for the Allied invasion of Italy, during which time Lyne was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). The division (with the 201st Guards Brigade temporarily replacing the 168th) landed at Salerno on 9 September, with Lyne's 169th Brigade landing on the 56th Division's left, and aiming for the objective, Montecorvino airfield. The brigade destroyed thirty-nine aircraft on the ground but, despite support from a squadron of Sherman tanks of the Royal Scots Greys, German resistance was stubborn and refused to move off the airfield and only fell, almost four days later, after fierce fighting, with heavy losses to all three Queen's battalions. Even then, the brigade was within range of German artillery fire, thus temporarily negating the use of the airfields to the Allies.

Over the next few days Lyne's brigade, holding a large sector of the front with too few troops, was reinforced with a company of Royal Engineers, which acted as infantry. With the Germans, who had been concerned mainly with attacking the division's right – where there had emerged a large gap between the US and British forces – on the retreat from Salerno on 17 September, due to the situation turning in favour of the Allies, the brigade, along with the rest of the heavily battered 56th Division, spent the next few days in further fighting in an attempt to break through the mountain passes on the path to Naples. On 27 September Lyne's brigade was relieved, in a unique event, by Brigadier Lashmer "Bolo" Whistler's 131st Brigade of the 7th Armoured Division under Major General George Erskine. The 131st Brigade was, like the 169th Brigade, also composed of three TA Queen's battalions and referred to as the Queen's Brigade.

The capture of Naples followed days later, with Lieutenant-General Richard McCreery's British X Corps (under which command the 56th Division was serving) advancing on the left of the US Fifth Army, reaching the defensive line on the Volturno river by 9 October. On the day after, the division's GOC, Major-General Graham, was injured and Lyne, the most senior brigade commander, took temporary command of the division for the Volturno crossing. Although the other two X Corps divisions, the 7th Armoured and 46th, the gained a foothold across the river, the 56th Division managed only to gain a weak foothold, which was not exploited. The division had to use the US 3rd Division's crossing point. Around this time the 168th Brigade (which was detached from the division in April) also returned to the 56th Division. On 15 October Major-General Gerald Templer arrived to take command of the division, and Lyne returned to the 169th Brigade.

The division's next task was to assault Monte Camino, the last major feature before the Winter Line (or Gustav Line), which failed in mid-November with heavy losses, mainly to the 201st Guards Brigade, with Lyne himself being wounded on 13 November. Returning by early December, the division, with Lyne's brigade playing a major role, was supported by a very heavy artillery barrage and took part in the second attempt to capture Monte Camino, which was taken and the Germans finally thrown off the mountain. On 8 January 1944, however, Lyne returned to hospital and so missed the division's crossing of the Garigliano river during the first Battle of Monte Cassino. He returned again to the brigade on 21 January, as it captured the first peaks of the Aurunci Mountains.

After holding their positions gained for the next few weeks, the 56th Division was ordered to the Anzio beachhead in early February, where the Allied forces there were in trouble. Lyne's brigade arriving there on 18 February, it was almost immediately involved in very heavy fighting, with casualties being high on both sides. After the fighting died down, towards the end of February, the brigade was involved in holding the front line, which resembled the trench warfare of the First World War.

In early March the heavily battered 56th Division was relieved by the 5th Division, with Lyne's 169th Brigade being relieved by the 13th Brigade and intending to return to Egypt for rest and retraining. Just before the division set sail, however, Lyne, who had been with the division for just over two years and was now an experienced battlefield commander, was ordered to return to England to become GOC of the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division, and receiving promotion to acting Major-General. The division – comprising the 176, 177th and 197th Infantry Brigades plus supporting units – had been training throughout the United Kingdom since its creation in August 1939 as a second-line duplicate of the 55th (West Lancashire) Infantry Division, but, despite a few of its units having seen action in France, for the most part the division was inexperienced, although very well trained, and had been selected to take part in the Allied invasion of Normandy as part of the 21st Army Group, commanded by General Sir Bernard Montgomery. The 59th Division was serving in Kent as part of Lieutenant-General Neil Ritchie's XII Corps, itself part of the British Second Army, commanded by Lieutenant-General Sir Miles Dempsey.

The 59th Division landed in Normandy in late June 1944, almost three weeks after the D-Day landings on 6 June. Soon after arrival the division transferred from XII Corps to Lieutenant-General John Crocker's I Corps, and, on 8 July, took part in Operation Charnwood, a frontal assault aimed at capturing Caen. Although a D-Day objective for the British 3rd Division, stubborn resistance from the German 21st Panzer Division prevented the division from capturing the city, as had numerous attempts afterwards. Lyne's 59th Division, supported by elements of the 27th Armoured Brigade, and with the British 3rd Division on its left and the 3rd Canadian Division on its right, attacking through La Bijude and Galmanche, were faced by the 12th SS Panzer Division and fierce fighting took place, although by 9 July most of Caen was in Allied hands. However, the 59th Division, in its first major operation, suffered over 1,200 casualties.

The division soon moved back on 11 July to Ritchie's XII Corps, two days later transferring to Lieutenant-General Gerard Bucknall's XXX Corps. In mid-July the division fought in the Second Battle of the Odon, where, fighting along the Odon river, it was tasked with capturing Noyers and Missy, operating in conjunction with the 49th (West Riding) Infantry Division. The operation, which failed and cost the 59th Division further casualties, was intended to divert German attention away from Operation Goodwood, the British attempt to break out of the Normandy beachhead. The division again joined XII Corps and, after the Americans launched Operation Cobra, XXX Corps, now commanded by Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, launched Operation Bluecoat and the Germans began withdrawing to Falaise. At the same time, in the first week of August, the 59th Division, with the 56th Independent Brigade temporarily under command and supported by elements of the 34th Tank Brigade, launched an attack over the Orne river and after much hard fighting – with Captain David Jamieson of the 7th Battalion, Royal Norfolks securing the 59th Division's first and only Victoria Cross (VC) – secured a bridgehead at Grimbosq, before advancing to Falaise where it held the edge of the "pocket".

The end of the Normandy Campaign also saw the disbandment of the 59th Division. By this stage of the war, Britain had reached the limits of its available manpower, and so replacements for battle casualties were severely lacking, and some units were broken up and their men posted to other units. With Lyne's 59th Division being the most junior British division in France, it was broken up, although not as a reflection of its performance, with Montgomery, the army group commander, and Dempsey, the army commander, both being highly impressed with the 59th Division.

Despite the division being disbanded, the division HQ remained in suspended animation until October, and Lyne temporarily commanded the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division in place of the GOC, Major-General Douglas Graham, who had been Lyne's superior as GOC 56th Division in Italy. Graham returned in late November, only for the 50th Division to suffer the same fate as the 59th Division, again due to manpower shortages, although the division was reduced to a training reserve formation.

On 22 November Lyne was, unusually for an infantryman, selected to become GOC of the veteran 7th Armoured Division, in place of Major-General Gerald Lloyd-Verney who, his superiors believed, had been over-promoted. The division was a much-changed formation to the one which had fought in the Western Desert, and now consisted of the 22nd Armoured and 131st Infantry Brigades and had gone through changes of command.Lyne did not see his first action as an armoured commander, however, until mid-January 1945, when, serving under Lieutenant-General Ritchie's XII Corps, it fought in Operation Blackcock, the attempt to clear the Roer triangle. The operation was successful, with the 7th Armoured managing to seize their objective, despite the frozen ground, with relatively light casualties. The division remained in its positions until relieved in late February.

The division's next assignment was the crossing of the Rhine river into Germany, codenamed Operation Plunder, although the division did not take part in the initial stages, and only crossed the river on 27 March, three days after the operation began, spearheaded by the 11th Hussars. The division then, against token resistance, raced across Germany, by 8 April reaching the outskirts of the city of Bremen, which fell to the British 3rd Division, and crossed the river Weser a week later. The end of the war in Europe arrived soon after. He took part in the Victory Parade in Berlin on 21 July 1945.

Postwar

After the war he became Commandant of the British Sector in Berlin. He was made Director of Staff Duties (DSD) at the War Office in 1946 in 1949; he retired due to ill health in early 1949, aged just 49. Never marrying, he died in Kersey, Suffolk on 4 November 1970. Although he remains largely unknown, Lyne was a highly competent and experienced battlefield commander, gaining respect from both his superiors, most notably Montgomery and Dempsey, and subordinates alike.

References

Lewis Lyne Wikipedia