Monty’s Iron Sides: From the Normandy Beaches to Bremen with the 3rd Division

On 6 June 1944, Major-General Bernard Montgomery chose his ‘Iron Sides’, the famous British 3rd Division, to spearhead the Allied attack on the Normandy beaches on D-Day. As the only division in the British Liberation Army to participate in the savage fighting from D-Day all the way through to VE-Day, the Iron Sides’ contribution to victory in Europe was immense. Their courageous efforts won them two Victoria Crosses, but the price in lives was high; the division suffered 15,000 casualties including 2,586 killed in action. The 3rd was probably the most ‘British’ of all the divisions fighting in North-West Europe. It included the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, a Highland gunner regiment, the Royal Ulster Rifles, the two roses of East Yorkshire and South Lancashire, the East Anglians (Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolns) and the Midlands (Warwick and Shropshire), besides cockneys from the Middlesex Regiment and the Recce Regiment from Northumberland. Following the successful formula adopted in his other divisional histories, Patrick Delaforce draws on the personal experiences of privates, NCOs and young officers from the dozen fighting regiments of the 3rd Division - the words of the soldiers who fought at the sharp end of war.