86th (East Anglian) (Hertfordshire Yeomanry) Field Regiment, Royal Artillery
military unit
The 86th (East Anglian) (Hertfordshire Yeomanry) Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, was a unit of Britain's part-time Territorial Army (TA) formed after World War I from existing artillery and Yeomanry Cavalry units recruited in Hertfordshire. Its self-propelled guns were among the first artillery to land in Normandy on D Day and served throughout the North West Europe campaign in World War II, seeing action in Normandy, at the liberation of Antwerp, in Operations Market Garden, Clipper and Veritable, the Rhine crossing and the advance across Germany. The regiment continued in the postwar TA until 1967, and its successor battery continued to 2014.
Origin
The Hertfordshire Yeomanry was a cavalry unit of Britain's part-time Territorial Force (TF), which had served in World War I. When the TF was reconstituted on 7 February 1920 only the 14 most senior Yeomanry regiments remained horsed, the other 39 being re-roled, generally as artillery. In March 1920 the Hertfordshire Yeomanry converted to the Royal Field Artillery (RFA) and amalgamated with the 1st and 2nd Hertfordshire Batteries of the 4th East Anglian Brigade, RFA, to form a new 3rd East Anglian Brigade, RFA. The Yeomanry component supplied 3rd and 4th Hertfordshire Batteries. (The remainder of 4th (EA) Brigade, the Northamptonshire Battery, joined the 1st East Anglian Brigade, see below.) When the TF was reorganised as the Territorial Army in 1921 the new 3rd Brigade was designated as 86th (East Anglian) Brigade, RFA, changing the following year to 86th (East Anglian) (Hertfordshire Yeomanry) Brigade, RFA, with the following organisation and locations:
Headquarters (HQ) at 27 St Andrew Street, Hertford (later known as Yeomanry House)
341 (Hertfordshire) Battery at Riding School, Harpenden Road, St Albans
342 (Hertfordshire) Battery at Hertford
343 (Hertfordshire) Battery at Clarendon Hall, Watford
344 (Hertfordshire) Battery (Howitzer) at Bearton Camp, Hitchin
It had been intended that only two of the batteries would carry the Hertfordshire Yeomanry subtitle, but the first commanding officer (CO), Col Geoffrey Lawrence, had served with the RFA during the war (in 2nd East Anglian Brigade) and ensured that the RFA experience within the brigade was spread among the yeomanry batteries as well, while all four batteries adopted the yeomanry badge.
Equipment and training
The establishment of a TA RFA brigade was four 4-gun horsedrawn batteries, three of the batteries equipped with 18-pounder guns and one with 4.5-inch howitzers, all of World War I patterns. Recruitment to the Hertfordshire brigade was initially slow, hampered by the transfer of most of the officers and men to the short-lived Defence Force established in 1921 in response to a coal miners' strike (as 86th Brigade, RFA (Defence Force)). After the Defence Force was stood down in July, the brigade attended its first annual training camp.
The RFA was subsumed into the Royal Artillery on 1 June 1924, the units becoming 'Field Brigades' and 'Field Batteries' respectively.
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