Commonwealth Army
The Fourteenth Army, like the Eighth Army, was made up from units that came from all corners of the Commonwealth. In 1945 not only was the Fourteenth Army the largest army in the Commonwealth, it was the largest single army in the world with about half a million men under command. Men of the 81st and 82nd West African and 11th East African Divisions served with great distinction. There were many units and formations from the British Army but the majority of the army was built around the British Indian Army, which was stated to be the largest all-volunteer army in history.
Read more about this topic: Fourteenth Army (United Kingdom)
Famous quotes containing the words commonwealth and/or army:
“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)