59th (Staffordshire) Motor Division. By September, the 55th (West Lancashire) Motor Division had also reformed the 164th Brigade. Despite the intention for the army to grow, the programme was complicated by a lack of central guidance on the expansion and duplication process and a lack of facilities, equipment and instructors. In April 1939, limited conscription was introduced. At that time 34,500 men, all aged 20, were conscripted into the regular army, initially to be trained for six months before being deployed to the forming second line units. It had been envisioned by the War Office that the duplicating process and recruiting the required numbers of men would take no more than six months. The process varied widely between the TA divisions. Some were ready in weeks while others had made little progress by the time the Second World War began on 1 September. Second World War Home defence On 4 September, the division established the second line duplicate of the 166th Brigade, the 177th. On 15 September, the 166th Infantry Brigade (renamed the 176th Infantry Brigade) and the 177th Brigade were transferred to the 59th (Staffordshire) Motor Division. This left the 55th (West Lancashire) Motor Division with the 164th and 165th Brigades. The former consisted of the 9th Battalion, King's Regiment (Liverpool), the 1/4th Battalion, the South Lancashire Regiment, and the 2/4th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment. The 165th Brigade was made up of the 5th Battalion, King's Regiment (Liverpool), and the 1st and the 2nd Battalions, Liverpool Scottish (Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders). Major-General Vivian Majendie was the division's general officer commanding (GOC), and had been in command since 1938. The division's initial war-time duties included deploying guards to the docks at Birkenhead, the Port of Liverpool, and the naval defences at Crosby, while also assisting the civilian authorities during air raids. On 6 September, the division fired its first shots of the war. Divisional anti-aircraft and machine guns fired on three aircraft flying low over the River Mersey. The shots missed, and the aircraft were later determined to be Royal Air Force Handley Page Hampden bombers. The war deployment plan for the TA envisioned its divisions being sent overseas, as equipment became available, to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) that had already been dispatched to Europe. The TA would join regular army divisions in waves as its divisions completed their training, the final divisions deploying a year after the