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The 38th (Welsh) Infantry Division of the British Army was active during the First and the Second World War. The division arrived in France in 1915. In July 1916 at the Battle of the Somme, it captured the strongly held Mametz Wood with the loss of nearly 4,000 men, allowing XV Corps to advance to the next phase of the Somme offensive, the Battle of Bazentin Ridge. A year later it made a successful attack in the Battle of Pilckem Ridge, the opening of the Third Battle of Ypres. In 1918, during the German Spring Offensive and the Allies' subsequent Hundred Days Offensive, the division attacked several fortified German positions. It crossed the Ancre River, broke through the Hindenburg Line and German positions on the River Selle, and ended the war on the Belgian frontier; by then, it was considered one of the Army's elite units. The division was demobilised after the war. It was recreated in September 1939, but never deployed overseas as a division, restricted to home defence duties around the United Kingdom. It was constituted from September 1944 until the end of the war as the 38th Infantry (Reserve) Division, a training formation. (Full article...)