8th Infantry Division (France) Army, French Third Army, French Fourth Army, French Fifth Army, French Sixth Army and French Tenth Army. During the Battle of France in May 1940 the division was made up of the following units: It was a newly created division. The 12th Foreign Infantry Regiment was mainly made up of Spanish Republican Soldiers who had fled to France after the Spanish Civil War. The other regiments were made up of reservists. The 8th Motorised Infantry Brigade was absorbed by the 7th Light Armoured Division, creating the 7th Armoured Division in 1963. In 1977, the 7th Armoured Division was dissolved and
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