59th (Staffordshire) Divisional Engineers
military unit
59th (Staffordshire) Divisional Engineers was the Royal Engineer (RE) component of 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division, a formation of the British Army during the Second World War. The division saw action in the Normandy Campaign, and after it was broken up in August 1944 the Divisional Engineers were attached directly to the General Headquarters of 21st Army Group and continued in action until the end of the War in Europe as 59th GHQ Troops, Royal Engineers (59 GHQTRE).
The lineage of this unit is preserved in the form of 107 (Lancashire and Cheshire) Field Sqn at Birkenhead.
Origin
Following the Munich Crisis of 1938, the British War Office decided to double the size of the part-time Territorial Army. The existing 55th (West Lancashire) Infantry Division began forming a new 2nd Line duplicate, designated the 59th (Staffordshire) Infantry Division (although about a third of the units came from Lancashire rather than Staffordshire). This process was still under way on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. (A previous 59th (2nd North Midland) Division had existed during the First World War as the 2nd Line of the 46th (North Midland) Division, but both had been subsequently disbanded.)
The new division became operational on 15 September 1939, but the Divisional Engineers, based in Aigburth, Liverpool, were assembled more slowly under the control of 55th Division and only joined later:
509th Field Company, RE, joined on 11 January 1940
510th Field Company, RE, joined on 10 March 1940
511th Field Park Company, RE, joined on 30 December 1939
257th Field Company, RE, based in Manchester, joined from 66th Divisional Engineers (the 2nd Line of 42nd (East Lancashire) Divisional Engineers) on 23 June 1940 after the disbandment of the 66th Division
24th Bridging Platoon, Royal Engineers, subsequently joined 1 October 1943
The division served in various parts of the United Kingdom for the first part of the war, including a spell in Northern Ireland (June 1942 to March 1943). Latterly it was training for Operation Overlord. It embarked on 21 June 1944 and landed in Normandy on 27 June (D + 21).
Normandy
On 8 July, 59th Division took part in a large-scale assault on Caen.
“59th (Staffordshire) Divisional Engineers” enters the record as military unit. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what 59th, Staffordshire and Divisional can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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