of the 9th Infantry Division. On August 8, he was promoted to the two-star rank of major general and succeeded Major General Rene Edward De Russy Hoyle as Commanding General of the 9th Infantry Division, a Regular Army formation. After training in the United States for several months Eddy led the division overseas, landing in French North Africa on November 8, 1942 as part of Operation Torch. The 9th Division fought in the subsequent Allied campaign in North Africa, and played a large role in the Battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943. The campaign came to an end in May 1943, with the surrender of almost 250,000 Axis soldiers. Eddy later led the 9th Division in Operation Husky, codename for the Allied invasion of Sicily, in August 1943. In November the 9th Division was sent to England in preparation for the Allied invasion of Northern France, scheduled for the spring of 1944. Eddy led the 9th Division in the early stages of Operation Overlord, codename for the Battle of Normandy, landing on Utah Beach four days after the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944. For his role in the capture of the French port of Cherbourg, which much impressed his superiors, Eddy was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. In the opinion of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Eddy had outperformed all the other American divisional commanders in Normandy, and he had slated Eddy to take over the next available corps. In Augusr he became Commanding General of XII Corps, which was often the spearhead of Lieutenant General George S. Patton's Third Army. Eddy led XII Corps in the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine and in the subsequent fighting on the Western Front. During the Battle of the Bulge, Eddy's XII Corps successfully held the southern shoulder of the German salient. In April 1945, after taking part in the Western Allied invasion of Germany, shortly before the end of World War II in Europe, Eddy returned to the United States due to a severe illness (extreme hypertension, from which he eventually recovered) and was replaced in command of XII Corps by Major General Stafford LeRoy Irwin. Postwar In the postwar period, Eddy served again at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, this time as Commandant of the United States Army Command and General Staff College, from January 1948 to July 1950. He was president of a review board that made a thorough