The Liverpool Welsh was a unit of Britain's Volunteer Force and Territorial Army that was active from 1860 to 1862 and from 1939 to 1956. The 39th (Liverpool Welsh) Lancashire Rifle Volunteer Corps was formed in Liverpool by the Welsh Literary Society on 9 February 1860, and it consisted of clerks and bookkeepers who volunteered amid an invasion scare with France in 1859. The corps disbanded in 1862, merging into the Liverpool Rifles. The 46th (Liverpool Welsh) Royal Tank Regiment was reformed in 1939 on the eve of World War II, and it was sent to Egypt in July 1942, fighting at the Second Battle of El Alamein, the Tunisian campaign, Operation Husky, and then in the invasion of Italy itself. The Liverpool Welsh participated in the Battle of Anzio, where the regiment suffered heavy losses at the Buonriposo ridge in February 1944. The regiment later moved to Palestine to rest and refit, and it participated in Operation Manna, the liberation of Greece, in late 1944. The regiment was caught up in the Dekemvriana violence in December 1944, during which it was ordered to clear ELAS out of the Athens-Piraeus area. The regiment remained in Greece until the end of the war, and it was transformed into the 653rd (The Liverpool Welsh) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment in 1947, renumbered as the 533rd in 1950, and amalgamated into the 4th Lancashire Artillery Volunteers in 1956.