This hard fought,battle weary infantry division in total since D-Day 50th Division had suffered of 488 officers and 6,932 ORs casualties, but had also assimilated 358 officers and 8,019 ORs.

On 29 November the division was relieved and pulled back into Belgium.

Return to England
Earlier in November Field Marshal Montgomery had made a speech to the division's officers in a cinema in Bourg Leopold to the effect that the 50th Division would return to England as 50th Infantry (Reserve) Division, a training division.

Veterans who had served three and a half years or more overseas would be repatriated to Britain under the Python scheme or given generous leave (LILOP, Leave in lieu of Python). Three other categories of men were drawn up, the more recent infantry reinforcements were to be posted to other rifle battalions, men who required retraining as infantry and others who could perform garrison duties.

Most of the infantry battalions were reduced to cadre strength of 12 officers and 109 men (the 9th D.L.I. and 2nd Devons were reinforced and joined 131st Infantry Brigade of the 7th Armoured Division in exchange for the 1/6th and 1/7th Battalions Queen's Royal Regiment (West Surrey)).

The 74th Field Regiment R.A was transferred to the 49th Division, the 90th to 21st Army Group control, the 102nd Anti-Tank Regiment transferred to the 15th Division. The remains of the division returned to Britain on 14 December to train new recruits and converted rear echelon personnel.

In August 1945 the division headquarters relinquished control of its units, was sent to Norway and converted into H.Q. British Land Forces Norway for the latter stages of Operation Doomsday.

 The site http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/ has a lot of publications that may be downloaded. For example, the first five hits for a search on the word "Canadian":

* CANADIAN UPPER AIR DATA

* HUMIDITY IN CANADIAN BUILDINGS

* Canadian Light Infantry in Adaptive Dispersed Operations

* Telemedicine for the Canadian Forces: What Is a Viable Satellite Means for the Canadian Forces to Deliver Telemedicine Information Between a Deployed Force and a Canada Based Supporting Hospital

* The Entry of the Bering Sea Water into the Canadian Basin Gyre

 No doubt there is plenty of material on Canadian military operations as well if one were interested. Not every document is of equal worth, of course, but a resource well worth looking at if one is looking for a variety of sources.

Cheers

BW
--BWilson

Hi Rich,

 "Canadian" was used as an example. I'd actually like to compel dtic to provide me a complete accounting of all the U.S. Army battalions after the regiments were done away with in the 1950s ... yeah, I can dream! I knew about CARL, but didn't know about the Donovan Library. Thanks for the tip.

Cheers,

BW
--BWilson