during the Battle of France. The Army Group Royal Artillery (AGRA) concept was developed during Exercise 'Bumper' held in the UK in 1941, organised by the commander of Home Forces, General Alan Brooke (himself a Gunner) with Lt-Gen Bernard Montgomery as chief umpire. This large anti-invasion exercise tested many of the tactical concepts that would be used by the British Army] in the latter stages of the war. The gunnery tacticians developed the AGRAs as powerful artillery brigades, usually comprising three or four medium regiments and one heavy regiment, which could be rapidly moved about the battlefield, and had the punch to destroy enemy artillery with counter-battery (CB) fire. AGRAs were provided to field armies at a scale of about one per Army corps. 61st (C&DY) Medium Rgt was assigned to 8th AGRA when it was formed on 1 May 1943 at Brandeston Hall, Woodbridge, Suffolk. It was assigned to 21st Army Group being formed for the planned invasion of Normandy (Operation Overlord), in which it generally supported operations by VIII Corps. Normandy Overlord was launched on D-Day, 6 June 1944, and HQ 8th AGRA landed at Arromanches on 18 June to prepare for the forthcoming Operation Epsom. However, landings fell behind schedule and 61st (C&DY) Med Rgt did not arrive until 2 July, when it deployed at St Manvieu under the command of Lt-Col D.M. Bateson. The regiment arrived in time to take part in Operation Jupiter directed against the dominating ridge of Hill 112 and the villages of Éterville and Maltot, which would open the way to the River Orne. The AGRA's tasks were to be CB, counter-Flak, counter-mortar (CM) and harassing fire (HF), some fired at extreme range. For the assault phase 61st (C&DY) Med Rgt was directly allocated to support the Royal Scots Greys of 4th Armoured Brigade aiming to exploit to the Orne in Phase 4 of the attack. Each medium regiment provided a double observation post (OP) with two forward observation officer (FOO) parties to the field regiment supporting the attacking brigade. The fireplan began on 10 July with HF tasks from 01.00 to 03.00, then heavy timed concentrations on all the known centres of enemy resistance began at 03.50: 8 AGRA's four medium regiments fired for 10 minutes on Les Duanes. 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division got into Éterville and Maltot, but a stalemate developed on Hill 112 and Maltot was untenable unless the