British 54th Infantry Brigade
Encyclopedia
The 54th Infantry Brigade was a British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 brigade
Brigade
A brigade is a major tactical military formation that is typically composed of two to five battalions, plus supporting elements depending on the era and nationality of a given army and could be perceived as an enlarged/reinforced regiment...

.

It was originally part of the 18th (Eastern) Division
British 18th (Eastern) Division
The British 18th Division was a New Army division formed in September 1914 as part of the K2 Army Group. The division landed in France on 25 May 1915 and spent the duration of the First World War in action on the Western Front, becoming one of the elite divisions of the British Army...

 active on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...

 during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

.

During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 the Brigade was again part of the British 18th Infantry Division
British 18th Infantry Division
For the First World War unit, see 18th Division.The 18th Infantry Division was a Division of the British Army in the Second World War, a duplicate of the 54th Division using mostly units with connections to East Anglia ....

. The formation was sent to Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, under the command of Brig. E.H.W. Backhouse, with the rest of the Division in 1942 and after the Battle of Singapore
Battle of Singapore
The Battle of Singapore was fought in the South-East Asian theatre of the Second World War when the Empire of Japan invaded the Allied stronghold of Singapore. Singapore was the major British military base in Southeast Asia and nicknamed the "Gibraltar of the East"...

 against the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese surrendered along with the rest of the Singapore garrison.

In the 1980s the Brigade was again active as 54 (East Anglia) Brigade, a Territorial Army regional brigade in the United Kingdom. It was amalgamated with 49 Brigade
British 49th Infantry Brigade
The British Army's 49th Infantry Brigade started its existence as part of the British 16th Division, part of Kitchener's Army in the First World War...

 and thus disbanded in 1995.

Organisation in World War II

  • 4th Battalion, The Royal Norfolk Regiment
  • 4th Battalion, The Suffolk Regiment
  • 5th Battalion, The Suffolk Regiment
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