A Battery (The Chestnut Troop) Royal Horse Artillery is the senior Battery in the

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

Royal Artillery The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...

and is part of

1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery 1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery is a regiment of the Royal Horse Artillery in the British Army. It currently serves in the armoured field artillery role, and was equipped with the AS90 self-propelled gun, until it was retired from service ...

. The Chestnut Troop is currently based in Purvis Lines at Larkhill Barracks. The unit is currently equipped as a Close Support Artillery Battery, with the

AS-90 The AS-90 ("Artillery System for the 1990s"), known officially as Gun Equipment 155 mm L131, is an armoured self-propelled artillery formerly used by the British Army and subsequently donated for use by Ukrainian Army. It can fire standa ...

Self-propelled gun Self-propelled artillery (also called locomotive artillery) is artillery equipped with its own propulsion system to move toward its firing position. Within the terminology are the self-propelled gun, self-propelled howitzer, self-propelled mo ...

History

Formation and early years

A Troop, Royal Horse Artillery was raised as The Chestnut Troop at Woolwich on 1 February 1793. In 1798 the troop saw action in the Irish Rebellion and in 1799 it fought in the Netherlands. In 1806,

Hew Dalrymple Ross Field Marshal Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross, (5 July 177910 December 1868) was a British Army officer. After seeing active service during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, he fought as a troop commander in many of the battles of the Peninsular War and the H ...

assumed command of the unit which he led during campaigns in Spain, Portugal and France. Ross was later knighted and promoted to

field marshal Field marshal (or field-marshal, abbreviated as FM) is the most senior military rank, senior to the general officer ranks. Usually, it is the highest rank in an army (in countries without the rank of Generalissimo), and as such, few persons a ...

. After 1809, it fought in the

Peninsular War The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Kingdom of Portugal, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French ...

and at the

Battle of Waterloo The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, Belgium, Waterloo (then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium), marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The French Imperial Army (1804–1815), Frenc ...

. Between 1855 and 1856 it fought in the

Crimean War The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont fro ...

World War I

The outbreak of the First World War saw the unit, now enlarged to a battery, deployed to France in 1914. It served during all four years, firing its last round at Orrs on 4 November 1918.

Between the two World Wars

In 1919 the battery was deployed in North West Persia as part of the Norperforce. and, in 1921, it was deployed to

Basra Basra () is a port city in Iraq, southern Iraq. It is the capital of the eponymous Basra Governorate, as well as the List of largest cities of Iraq, third largest city in Iraq overall, behind Baghdad and Mosul. Located near the Iran–Iraq bor ...

. In 1938, the battery became part of 1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery.

World War II

The battery was deployed to France, serving with the British Expeditionery Force until the evacuation from Dunkirk. Later in 1940, the battery was sent to Egypt as part of the Desert Rats. In 1941, it fought as part of the

Siege of Tobruk The siege of Tobruk () took place between 10 April and 27 November 1941, during the Western Desert campaign (1940–1943) of the World War II, Second World War. An Allies of World War II, Allied force, consisting mostly of the 9th Division ...

. The battery served continuously in the Western Desert especially in El Alamein in 1942. After El Alamein, elements of the battery were seconded to the newly formed "Long Range Desert Group" because of their intimate knowledge of the desert and survival skills. Afterwards, it was then re-equipped with 105mm SP guns before fighting in Italy for the rest of the World War. During the Italian Campaign, commander Anthony Clarke refused orders to bombard the town of

Sansepolcro Sansepolcro, formerly Borgo Santo Sepolcro, is a town and ''comune'' founded in the 11th century, located in the Italian Province of Arezzo in the eastern part of the region of Tuscany. Situated on the upper reaches of the Tiber river, the town ...

in order to preserve

Piero della Francesca Piero della Francesca ( , ; ; ; – 12 October 1492) was an Italian Renaissance painter, Italian painter, mathematician and List of geometers, geometer of the Early Renaissance, nowadays chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is charact ...

's fresco painting '' The Resurrection'', having remembered

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley ( ; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction novel, non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the ...

's description of it as "the greatest picture in the world."

Post war

In the post-war period the battery served in Egypt, the United Kingdom and Germany. Most significantly, between 1965 and 1967 it was deployed to Aden. In the 1970s, the battery completed tours in Northern Ireland, and in 1990, the battery provided soldiers for a combined A/B/E Battery which fought in the

Gulf War , combatant2 = , commander1 = , commander2 = , strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems , page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...

. In 1996, the battery served in

Bosnia Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to th ...

as a part of

IFOR The Implementation Force (IFOR) was a NATO-led multinational peace enforcement force in Bosnia and Herzegovina under a one-year mandate from 20 December 1995 to 20 December 1996 under the codename ''Operation Joint Endeavour''. Background In ...

. In April 2004, the unit deployed to Basra as part of the 1 Cheshire Battlegroup, and was tasked with developing the

Iraqi Police The Iraqi Police (IP) is the uniformed police force responsible for the enforcement of civil law in Iraq. Its organisation, structure and recruitment were guided by the Coalition Provisional Authority after the 2003 American invasion of Iraq, ...

within the City, as part of Operation Telic 4. Later in 2007 the battery deployed to

on Operation Telic 10. In 2009 A Battery served in Sangin as part of 3 Rifles Battlegroup on Operation Herrick 11.

References

Bibliography

External links

* {{Royal Horse Artillery Royal Horse Artillery batteries Royal Artillery batteries 1793 establishments in Great Britain Military units and formations established in 1793