The 44th Siege Battery was a unit of Britain's Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) raised during World War I. It manned heavy Railway guns supporting the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front from 1916 to 1918, seeing action on the Somme, at Vimy Ridge and at Cambrai. A distant successor unit continues in the present-day Royal Artillery. Mobilisation On the outbreak of war in August 1914, units of the part-time Territorial Force (TF) moved into their war stations. The Tynemouth Royal Garrison Artillery was a 'defended ports' unit tasked with manning the defences of the River Tyne. By October 1914, the campaign on the Western Front was bogging down into Trench warfare and there was an urgent need for batteries of siege artillery to be sent to assist the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Soon TF coast defence units that had volunteered for overseas service were supplying trained gunners to serving RGA units and providing cadres to form complete new units. 44th Siege Battery was formed on 12 July 1915 at Sheerness from a cadre provided by the Tynemouth RGA and Regular RGA coastal gunners brought back from the garrisons of Gibraltar and Malta. Formally, it was a New Army ('Kitchener's Army') unit rather than TF or Regular. Service The battery was sent out to the Western Front to man two 12-inch railway howitzers, disembarking at Le Havre on 25 January 1916. On 16 February it was allocated to XIII Corps in Fourth Army, which was preparing for that summer's 'Big Push' (the Battle of the Somme). The battery came under 21st Heavy Artillery Brigade on 12 March and spent the next few weeks constructing dugouts first at Morlancourt and then at Méaulte. On 9 April the battery reported that it had 'Rigged up a haystack with wire netting and straw over No 1 gun position'. It was also digging trenches for buried communication cables. In early May it came under the command of XV Corps, a headquarters that had returned from Egypt and now took over XIII Corps' section of the line for the forthcoming offensive. Somme On 2 June the battery brought up its No 1 gun and got it into position during the night under its 'haystack'. On 14 June No 2 gun was got into position near Vivier Farm. On 16 June No 1 gun fired four rounds for registration against Mametz Church. On 24 June both