c1944 'Minty' Rare Pair of Early Red 'Desert Rats' 7th Armoured Division Formation Sign Badges

Rare, cJan 44 early red uncut pr of 'Desert Rats' (Jerboas). Mint condition.



In November 1943, the division left Italy for the United Kingdom, with the last units arriving on 7 January 1944. The division was re-equipped with the new Cromwell cruiser tanks and in April and May received 36 Sherman Vc Fireflies. Each troop now had three 75 mm gun Cromwells and a 17-pounder gun Firefly. The Desert Rats were the only British armoured division to use the Cromwell as their main battle tank.


Major-General Gerald Lloyd-Verney, GOC 7th Armoured Division, enters Ghent in his Staghound armoured car, 8 September 1944.
The 22nd Armoured Brigade embarked on 4 June, and most of the division landed on Gold Beach by the end of 7 June, a day after the initial landings.5861 7th Armoured initially took part in Operation Perch and Operation Goodwood, two operations that formed part of the Battle for Caen. During Perch, the division was to spearhead one arm of a pincer attack to capture the city. Due to a change in plan, elements of the division engaged tanks of the Panzer-Lehr-Division and the Heavy SS-Panzer Battalion 101 in the Battle of Villers-Bocage and were repulsed.62 Following the capture of Caen, the division took part in Operation Spring, which was intended to keep the German forces pinned to the British front away from the Americans who were launching Operation Cobra, and then Operation Bluecoat, an attack to support the American break-out and intercept German reinforcements moving to stop it. After the Battle of the Falaise Gap, which saw most of the German Army in Normandy destroyed, the 7th Armoured Division then took part in the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine.63

The division's performance in Normandy and the rest of France has been called into question and it has been claimed they did not match those of its earlier campaigns. In early August 1944, Major General George Erskine, who had commanded the division since January 1943, Brigadier William Hinde, commanding the 22nd Armoured Brigade, and up to 100 other officers of the division were removed from their positions and reassigned. Erskine was replaced as GOC by Major General Gerald Lloyd-Verney. Historians largely agree that this was a consequence of the "failure" at Villers-Bocage and had been planned since that battle.

Code: 151