History
At the end of 1941, by which time 1st Indian Support Group had joined the division, it was renamed 31st Indian Armoured Division and its brigades redesignated as the 251st and 252nd Indian Armoured Brigades and 31st Indian Support Group (the Motor Brigade's name remained unchanged).
In mid-1942, by which time the support group had been disbanded, the 251st brigade was detached and the rest of the division was shipped to join the British Tenth Army and served in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. The division never saw combat although the motor brigade was detached to Egypt and saw heavy action in the Western Desert Campaign during 1942 and again in 1944 and 1945 when, reformed as the 43rd Indian Infantry Brigade (Lorried) it was sent to the Italian Campaign as an independent brigade. The closest the rest of the division came to combat was in April 1944 when it was rushed to Egypt to crush a mutiny among the Greek 1st Infantry Brigade.
The Tank Regiments received M4 Shermans in November 1943, thought to be in preparation for a transfer to Italy which never came about, and only drove them in Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
The Division is now active as part of the present-day Indian Army, headquartered at Jhansi as part of XXI Corps.
Read more about this topic: 31st Indian Armoured Division
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)