Brooke's Battery

In the 100th anniversary year of the raising of Warwickshire’s first Royal Horse Artillery Battery, this short history fills a gap in the county’s military past.

Raised by Lord Brooke of Warwick Castle, here is the story of the formation, training and war service of an almost forgotten unit – the first Territorial Artillery Battery to go to France in 1914.

The volunteer ‘Saturday Night Soldiers’ of 1/1 Warwickshire Royal Horse Artillery were but a few of the tens of thousands of Gunners who suffered the privations of the Western Front; facing the cold, the rain, the mud, the squalor – and the enemy – with stoicism unlikely to be seen again.

For nearly four and a half years the men served in France and Flanders, and later Germany, before finally returning safely to Warwickshire in mid-1919 to be met by their families, friends and old comrades.