1st Warwickshire Volunteer Artillery
military unit
The 1st Warwickshire Volunteer Artillery, or 'Balsall Heath Artillery', was a part-time unit of Britain's Royal Artillery recruited from Birmingham. It served on the Western Front during the First World War, including the Battles of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Messines, Ypres, the German Spring Offensive and the final victorious Hundred Days Offensive. During the Second World War it fought in the Battle of France and was evacuated from Dunkirk. Later in served in the Italian campaign. It continued in the postwar Territorial Army, through a series of mergers, until 1971.
Volunteer Force
The 1st Warwickshire Volunteer Artillery was formed at Balsall Heath in Birmingham on 30 May 1900 when Nos 3 and 4 Warwickshire Batteries of the 1st Worcestershire and Warwickshire Artillery Volunteers became an independent unit, increased to four batteries. The batteries were equipped and trained as 'position artillery', to cooperate with the Volunteer Infantry Brigades. The Volunteer Artillery were part of the Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA), and the 1st Warwickshire were in the Southern Division, Royal Artillery. However, the divisional structure was abolished on 1 January 1902, when the unit was redesignated 1st Warwickshire RGA (Volunteers). Position artillery was redesignated as 'heavy artillery' in 1903.
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This entry incorporates text from “1st Warwickshire Volunteer Artillery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.