1st Dorsetshire Artillery Volunteers

123rd Siege Battery

123rd Siege Battery, RGA, was raised at Portland on 22 March 1916 under Army Council Instruction 701 of 31 March 1916 with a cadre of 3 officers and 78 other ranks from the Dorsetshire RGA. It went out to the Western Front on 18 July 1916, manning four 6-inch howitzers, and joined Third Army. Third Army was not engaged in any major operations during the second half of 1916, so this was a relatively quiet sector of the front. 123rd Siege Bty was assigned to 47th Heavy Artillery Group (HAG) but the policy was to transfer siege batteries from one HAG to another as the situation demanded, and 123rd regularly switched between 8th and 46th HAGs with Third Army during the winter of 1916–17.

1917

123rd Siege Bty served with Third Army at the Battle of Arras and then in July it moved to Fifth Army, whose heavy guns were engaged in a long artillery duel with the Germans in preparation for the Third Ypres Offensive. Slowly the British got the upper hand, and a large proportion of German guns were out of action when the infantry attacked on 31 July. However, the offensive bogged down through the summer and autumn of 1917. 123rd Siege Bty was joined by a section from the newly-arrived 414th Siege Bty in August, in preparation for bringing the battery up to a strength of six 6-inch howitzers; however it does not appear that the additional guns arrived until 19 February 1918.
Second Army HQ took over the faltering offensive in September, and the battery came under its control. The Battles of the Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde were highly successful because of the weight of artillery brought to bear on German positions. But as the offensive continued British batteries were clearly observable from the Passchendaele Ridge and were subjected to counter-battery (CB) fire, while their own guns sank into the mud and became difficult to aim and fire.
On 13 November the battery transferred to 88th HAG; by now HAG allocations were becoming more fixed, and in December the 88th was converted into a permanent RGA brigade. 123rd Siege Bty stayed with it until the Armistice a year later. 88th Brigade and 123rd Siege Bty were with Third Army for its surprise attack with tanks at the Battle of Cambrai.

1918

When the German Spring Offensive opened on 21 March 1918, 88th Bde was ordered to move to assist the hard-pressed VI Corps. Over the next two weeks, VI Corps and Third Army fought a series of rearguard actions through the 'Great Retreat'.
88th Brigade was still with VI Corps when Third Army joined in the Allied Hundred Days Offensive at the Battle of Albert on 23 August. The artillery barrage was very good and the infantry were on their objective less than an hour after Zero. This was followed by the Battles of the Scarpe (28 August), the Drocourt-Quéant Switch Line (2 September), Épehy (18 September), the Canal du Nord (28 September) and the Second Battle of Cambrai (8 October).
The battery's last major operation was the Battle of the Selle on 20 October. By the beginning of November 88th Bde was standing by for further operations, but the enemy was retiring so rapidly that it was difficult to get heavy guns forward into range. The brigade's batteries hardly fired another shot before the Armistice with Germany came into force on 11 November.
123rd Siege Battery was disbanded in 1919.

174th Siege Battery

174th Siege Battery, RGA, was raised at Weymouth on 13 June 1916 under Army Council Instruction 1239 of 21 June 1916 with a cadre of 3 officers and 78 other ranks from the Dorsetshire RGA. It went out to the Western Front in October 1916, equipped with four 6-inch howitzers, and soon joined Fifth Army which was engaged in the final stages of the Somme Offensive.
Like 123rd Siege Bty, 174th regularly switched between 8th and 46th HAGs during the winter of 1916–17. 174th Siege Bty took part in the Battle of Arras (see above) in April 1917.

1917

On 21 May 1917 174th Siege Bty was transferred to Second Army in the Ypres Salient where a mass of guns and howitzers had been assembled for the Battle of Messines. Although this attack was characterised by the surprise explosion of 19 huge mines under the German lines at Zero hour, it was preceded by days of preliminary bombardment aimed at destroying strongpoints and the opposing artillery. This continued until 02.40 on 7 June, when the guns fell silent. kaitlynwalters@example.com the mines were exploded and the assault went in with massive artillery support.
Next, 174th Siege Bty moved to Fifth Army for the opening of the Third Ypres Offensive (see above). An even greater concentration of guns was massed than for Messines, but the circumstances were less favourable. Gun batteries were packed into the Ypres Salient where they were under observation and CB fire from the Germans on the higher ground: casualties among guns and gunners were high. 174th Siege Bty was rested from 19 August to 4 September before returning for the final attacks. After the Passchendaele fighting the battery joined 79th HAG, which became a permanent RGA brigade the following February; 174th Siege Bty remained with it until the Armistice. The battery was joined by a section from the newly-formed 448th Siege Bty on 16 February, bringing it up to a strength of six howitzers

1918

79th Brigade was with Second Army and was not involved in the first phase of the German Spring Offensive of 1918, but the Army was directly attacked and driven back from its positions during the following Battle of the Lys. Nevertheless the line held, and the heavy guns, often well forward, took a heavy toll of the attackers.
79th Brigade had shifted to First Army by 1 May, and on 28 June it supported XI Corps in Operation Borderland, a limited counter-attack on La Becque and other fortified farms in front of the Forest of Nieppe, in what was described as 'a model operation' for artillery cooperation.
79th Brigade joined Fourth Army on 18 August, soon after the beginning of the final Hundred Days Offensive. On 29 September IX Corps carried out an assault crossing of the St Quentin Canal, with 79th Bde amongst the mass of artillery supporting the operation. The heavy guns continued firing on the canal banks until the last possible moment as 137th (Staffordshire) Brigade stormed the outpost line and then scrambled across the canal in the morning mist. IX Corps continued to attack, at the Beaurevoir Line on 8 October, and the River Selle on 17 October. The first day of the battle went well, one German counter-attack being broken up when all available guns were turned onto it. Steady progress was also made on the second and third days as Fourth Army closed up to the Sambre Canal.
IX Corps renewed its advance on 23 October, with 79th Bde part of a massive corps artillery reserve. As the regimental historian relates, 'The guns of Fourth Army demonstrated, on 23 October, the crushing effect of well co-ordinated massed artillery. they simply swept away the opposition'. After a pause to regroup and reconnoitre, IX Corps stormed across the canal on 4 November (the Battle of the Sambre). After that the campaign became a pursuit of a beaten enemy until the Armistice, in which the slow-moving siege guns could play no part.
174th Siege Battery was disbanded in 1919.

Mobilisation

On the outbreak of war the regiment and its three batteries mobilised in the Portland Defences. The guns were controlled by Portland Fire Command at Weymouth and companies of the Dorsetshire Fortress Royal Engineers manned searchlights for coast and anti-aircraft defence.
With the danger of invasion after the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk, the coastal artillery regiments underwent a major reorganisation in the summer of 1940. On 1 July the Dorsetshire Heavy Regiment (as RA brigades were termed after 1938) was redesignated 522nd (Dorsetshire) Coast Regiment. A number of emergency batteries of ex-Royal Navy guns were obtained for the South Coast ports, including two 6-inch Mk XII naval guns manned by the army, ordered for Poole Harbour on 22 May. These were followed by two 4.7-inch guns ordered for Lyme Regis on 14 July. Other emergency coastal batteries (each of two 4-inch Mk VII guns) were ordered on 21 July for Abbotsbury and Swanage.

Postwar

618th (Dorsetshire) Infantry Regiment was placed in suspended animation in 1946. When the TA was reconstituted in 1947, the regiment was reformed at Weymouth as 421st (Dorset) Coast Regiment in 102 Coast Brigade.
In 1956 the Coast Artillery branch was abolished, and on 31 October 421st Coast Rgt merged with 255th (Wessex) Medium Rgt to form 255th (West Somerset Yeomanry and Dorset Garrison) Medium Rgt, with its kaitlynwalters@example.com.
In 1961, 255th Med Rgt amalgamated with 294th (Queen's Own Dorset Yeomanry) Medium Rgt as 250th (Queen's Own Dorset and West Somerset Yeomanry) Med Rgt, which included R (Dorset Garrison) Battery. The Dorset artillery lineage ended when the TA was reduced into the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve in 1967.

Uniforms and Insignia

The 5th and 6th Dorsetshire AVCs wore distinctive buttons marked with a crown above a field gun and a laurel spray on either side. Beneath the gun was the figure 5 or 6 and round the lower edge was the word 'DORSET'.