2nd Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom) 2nd Armoured Brigade (United Kingdom) The 2nd Armoured Brigade was an armoured brigade of the British Army, part of the pre-war Regular Army, during the Second World War, originally titled 2nd Light Armoured Brigade. The 2nd Armoured Brigade was part of the 1st Armoured Division when it was sent as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France in 1940. It was evacuated from Brest without its heavy equipment. After being reformed it was sent in November 1941 to North Africa where it served with the 7th Armoured Division at Gazala, El Alamein and with the 1st Armoured Division
7th Armoured Division (United Kingdom) to the Rhine. 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, the division's GOC, who had been in command of 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 by Major General Gerald Lloyd-Verney. Historians largely agree that this was a consequence of the "failure" at Villers-Bocage and