History
This division was formed in South Africa on 23 October 1940 with its headquarters based in Pretoria.
The 3rd Infantry Division never took an active part in any battles but instead organised and trained the South African home defence forces, performed garrison duties and supplied replacements for the South African 1st Infantry Division and the South African 2nd Infantry Division.
The division was based in Pretoria until 1942, whereafter the division then moved to Ermelo in the Eastern Transvaal, although its constituent units were deployed as far as the then South West Africa.
On 4 April 1942 the division was redesignated the South African 3rd Armoured Division. This division was disbanded on 17 May 1943, without ever having been deployed. However, one of the division's constituent units, the 7th Motorised Brigade, did take part in the invasion of Madagascar.
Major General Hermanus Botha was the commander of the division from 23 August 1940 until its redesignation.
Media related to Military history of South Africa at Wikimedia Commons
Read more about this topic: 3rd Infantry Division (South Africa)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)
“If usually the “present age” is no very long time, still, at our pleasure, or in the service of some such unity of meaning as the history of civilization, or the study of geology, may suggest, we may conceive the present as extending over many centuries, or over a hundred thousand years.”
—Josiah Royce (1855–1916)