Major-General Lewis Owen Lyne CB DSO (21 August 1899 – 4 November 1970) was a British Army officer who served before and during the Second World War. He saw distinguished active service in command of the 169th Brigade in action in North Africa and Italy from 1943 to 1944, followed by the 59th Division during the Battle of Normandy in mid-1944, finally commanding the 7th Armoured Division during the final stages of the Northwestern Europe Campaign until Victory in Europe Day in May 1945. Early life and military career Born on 21 August 1899 in Newport, Wales, the second son of Charles Lyne, Lewis Lyne was educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College. Too young to see service during the First World War, Lyne joined the British Army and was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant into the Lancashire Fusiliers on 2 April 1919. After the war he gained a Regular commission on 24 July 1921. Posted to the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, he spent most of the interwar period serving with the battalion in various parts of the world, including Ireland, Egypt, Gibraltar and China, during which time, on 14 July 1923, he was promoted to lieutenant. He returned to England to attend the Staff College, Camberley from 1935 to 1936, where his fellow students in his year included Eric Bols, Terence Airey, Joseph Charles Haydon, Geoffrey Bourne, Walter Lentaigne, Freddie de Guingand and Charles Keightley, along with both Henry Wells of the Australian Army and Rod Keller of the Canadian Army. While there, on 16 October 1935 he was promoted to captain. After graduating he became a staff officer at the War Office in 1938 until the outbreak of war the following year. He was made a brevet major on 1 July 1938, a major on 1 August, and brevet lieutenant colonel on 1 July 1939. Second World War By the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Lyne was Deputy Assistant Military Secretary at the War Office, and in November, was promoted to acting lieutenant colonel (made temporary in late February) and became Assistant Military Secretary, where he was responsible for the minor details of officer appointments. In August 1940, after the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was evacuated from Dunkirk, Lyne, with a small cadre of Regular soldiers, was appointed Commanding Officer (CO) of the 9th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers in Bury, a war service battalion,