14 March 1942. London, England.
Major-General Brian Horrocks left the interview with some degree of both excitement and nervousness. Having commanded 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division since the previous summer, Horrocks was well pleased with what he had accomplished there. Working under Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, starting as a Battalion, then Brigade commander, his promotion to GOC 43rd Division had much to do with Montgomery’s influence. In the recent XII Corps exercise, Horrock’s leadership of his Division had shone out as one of things that XII Corps could be proud of.
9th Armoured Division had been formed in late 1940 under the command of Major-General Montague Burrows, who’d done a good job getting them equipped and trained. Between (acting) General Paget (GOCinC Home Forces) and General Brooke (CIGS), there’d been a lot of discussion about the state of some of the Divisions under their command.
Two major problems were firstly ‘aid to civilian powers’, which all too often had soldiers off helping with harvests, clearing up after air raids, even mending roads. This hampered the training schedules and often left the soldiers ‘browned off’. The second problem was the uneven levels of training. This was a problem harking back to the days when training was the responsibility of the unit commander. For some, like Montgomery, this was taken very seriously, for others, less so. A recent innovation (or rather recreation) was of Battle Schools, where men could be exposed to the sights, sounds and reality of the battlefield as much as possible. The arrival of combat veterans of North Africa was benefiting these schools.
Horrocks was asked to take over command of 9th Armoured Division. Like the rest of the Armoured Divisions, it was about to undergo a change in Basic Organisation. While Major-General Burrows had done a good job up until now, Brooke had an idea that he wanted to test out. The RAF had given a demonstration of No 1426 (Enemy Aircraft Circus) Flight at Duxford to the General Staff and Brooke had noted that they were being used to familiarise the RAF Squadrons with the enemy aircraft they were fighting. There was a growing bounty of captured German and Italian tanks, vehicles, artillery and other equipment of all types, and Brooke thought an Enemy Panzer Circus would be a good idea to help with training.
During the recent exercise the Guards Armoured Division had played the Opposition Force to Montgomery’s XII Corps. The problem was that British tactics were being used against British tactics, without great thought going in to thinking as the enemy. Horrocks had been offered was command of 9th Armoured Division with the proviso he was to turn into a Panzer Division. Not only were there plenty of captured German equipment, there were also plenty of POWs, and from their interrogations a pretty good idea of German training and tactics had been gleaned. Brooke wanted Horrocks to learn those tactics, and reform 9th Armoured Division into the same basic organisation as 9th Panzer Division. In doing so, it would give all the British units the chance to take on a panzer division on the training fields.
Horrocks had wondered why he’d been chosen, he was not expert on the German army and, as an infantry officer, had no real experience of leading an Armoured formation. This was precisely why Brooke and Paget had marked him out. In taking command of an Armoured Division, Horrocks would have to start from scratch, learning the ways of armoured warfare. 9th Panzer Division had fought against Charrington’s Armoured Brigade in Greece, which had given a decent account of itself. By having a standing Opposition Force, including some of the captured enemy vehicles and equipment, the British army could be trained to meet and fight an enemy, rather than just a mirror image of itself.
Brooke had the latest intelligence assessment of 9.Panzer Division, which was currently in Russia, and gave to Horrocks as a starting point. Paget put a unit from MI19 at Horrocks’ disposal, giving him access to all the POW materials, including from MI9 which they had taken over from. Brooke assured Horrocks that whatever reasonable requests he had to form this unit would be granted. The only thing he could think of immediately was translators, he would need plenty of German speakers if he was going to be able to get into the mind of the enemy. Paget took a note of that and promised he’d do his best, even though pretty much everyone was looking for people who spoke German.
One of the other reasons for choosing Horrocks was he’d spent most of the Great War in German POW camps, and had picked up fluency in both German and Russian. Before his appointment, Brooke was keen for Horrocks to make his way to the Eastern Front. Brooke wanted Horrocks to be able to get an idea of how the Germans were fighting in Russia; to see if there was anything that could be learned from the Red Army’s tactics; and seek the latest German equipment that the Russians might have captured. He would only have a short time to achieve all this, and get back to make 9th British Panzer Division a reality.