After disembarking from landing craft, troops of the 1st Battalion, Duke of Wellington's Regiment take cover on the beach at Cromer in Norfolk, 21 April 1942. Live machine-gun and mortar fire was used during this exercise.
After the retreat from Dunkirk it remained in the United Kingdom on home defence against a German invasion until early 1943 when it was sent to North Africa to take part in the Campaign in Tunisia. On 11 June 1943 the 1st Infantry Division was sent to the Italian island of Pantelleria (Operation Corkscrew) which they captured and occupied without casualties.
In late 1943 the brigade, with the rest of the division, was sent to Italy to join the British Eighth Armyfighting in Italy. However, they were soon transferred to command of the U.S. Fifth Army for the Anzio landings (Operation Shingle), where they landed at Anzio on 22 January 1944 and were destined to fight in some of the worst and most violent battles of the Italian campaign where, during a German counterattack on 3 February, the brigade was almost completely surrounded and was only saved from annihilation by a counterattack from the 1st Battalion, London Scottish of 168th (London) Brigade (temporarily detached from its parent unit, the 56th (London) Infantry Division, to come under 1st Division command).[14] The brigade continued to fight in numerous battles around Anzio and even when not, were still subjected to almost constant artillery, mortar or small arms fire. The brigade fought in the breakout from the Anzio beachhead and Operation Diadem.
Lieutenant Colonel B.W. Webb-Carter (Acting, from 14 to 26 August 1944)
Brigadier P. St Clair-Ford (from 26 August 1944 until 26 April 1945, again from 16 May 1945)
Lieutenant Colonel W.H. Hulton-Harrop (Acting, from 26 April to 16 May 1945)
Post-war
As part of 1st Division, the 3rd Brigade was in Egypt after the war until returning to Chiseldon, Wiltshire. During the Suez Crisis the brigade was moved to Malta, in August 1956, from where they went to Egypt on the aircraft carrier HMS Theseus, reaching Port Said just as the ceasefire was declared. It then went on to Cyprus in 1956. Following operations against EOKA, the brigade was disbanded there in 1963.[18]
From 1972, the 3rd Infantry Brigade was headquartered in the Kitchen Hill Factory in Lurgan until moving to the Mahon Road Barracks in Portadown in late 1976, under HQ Northern Ireland and was the HQ element for the security forces which controlled the South Armagh region of Ulster, including several battalions of the Ulster Defence Regiment. In September 1981 the brigade was disbanded and its units divided between 8 Brigade and 39 Brigade. The brigade re-formed on 1 July 1988 in the Drumadd Barracks in Armagh.[19] The brigade was disbanded once more on 1 September 2004 and its former units again divided between 8 Brigade and 39 Brigade.[20]
In 1989, the 3rd Infantry Brigade had the following structure:
Joslen, Lt-Col H.F. (2003) [1st pub. HMSO:1960]. Orders of Battle: Second World War, 1939–1945. Uckfield: Naval and Military Press. ISBN978-1-84342-474-1.
Blaxland, Gregory (1979). Alexander's Generals (the Italian Campaign 1944–1945). London: William Kimber. ISBN0-7183-0386-5.