The 2nd Welsh Brigade was a Royal Field Artillery unit of Britain's Territorial Force (TF) formed in 1908 that served in Palestine during World War I.

As a young clergyman he had been appointed chaplain to the 2nd Volunteer Battalion on 10 December 1876 and maintained the link as he rose in the church.

On 18 November the division was warned for garrison duty in India, but this was cancelled and in December it moved to Cambridge, then to Bedford in May 1915.

In October the batteries were re-armed with modern 18-pounder guns and on 8 November they handed over their obsolescent 15-pounders to the 2nd Line unit, which had just arrived at Bedford.

[14][15][17][19] 53rd (Welsh) Divisional Artillery was now ordered to France to join the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front.

[14][20][21] Early in 1917 the Egyptian Expeditionary Force launched the Sinai and Palestine Campaign by crossing the Sinai desert and advancing against Turkish forces at Gaza City, but CCLXVII Bde remained in the Suez Canal defences and missed the First Battle of Gaza.

[22][23] The brigade rejoined the division on 19 April while the Second Battle of Gaza was in progress, but although it crossed Wadi Ghuzzeh and took up position, it did not fire a shot in the action.

XX Corps, including 53rd (W) Divisional artillery, moved into position during the night of 30/31 October to capture Beersheba, and the bombardment began at 05.55.

The right column consisted of 160th (South Wales) Brigade but only one battery of CCLXVII Bde because of the shortage of water for the horses.

It was a difficult march over broken country in hot weather and the gunners had to haul their guns up to the head of the valley to get in range of the Khuweilfe heights.

The attack was renewed at 05.00 next morning, but the artillery support ceased when the ammunition wagons could not get up to the guns, and the infantry only got as far as Hill 1706.

However, on 6 November the division assaulted the Khuweilfe position supported by an intense bombardment by all its own guns and a heavy battery.

[34][35] In April a large number of formations and units were stripped from the EEF to reinforce the BEF on the Western Front following the German spring offensive.

In the summer of 1918 the 53rd Division was 'Indianised', with three quarters of the infantry battalions sent to the BEF and replaced by others drawn from the British Indian Army, but this did not affect the divisional artillery, which retained its composition to the end of the war.

During the afternoon a party of Turks was found eating lunch in the open, and every field gun in range was called in to destroy them.

The pressure was kept up on 20 September: 160th Bde was involved in severe fighting without artillery support while the guns were moving up, and was driven off Gallows Hill.

Training of the units was made difficult by the lack of arms and equipment, and the requirement to provide drafts to the 1st Line overseas.

It had the following organisation:[3][5][41][42] In the late 1930s the need for improved anti-aircraft (AA) defences for Britain's cities became apparent, and a programme of converting existing TA units was pushed forward.

[44][48][49] In mid-May 1940, as the Battle of France got under way, 45 AA Bde's units were ordered to find rifle detachments to guard against possible attacks by German paratroopers.

At first the towns of South Wales, including important coal and oil port facilities, refineries, steelworks and ordnance factories, were under almost nightly air attack, to which the AA defences replied as best they could.

In the absence of effective GL radar control, at night the guns could only reply blindly with fixed barrages.

Some of this was aircraft dropping Parachute mines in the Bristol Channel, which were plotted by the HAA batteries' GL sets.

The war establishment for regiments overseas was only three batteries, and 242 HAA Bty was formally detached in early June 1941.

The airbases at Singapore were under heavy attack and the RAF redeployed its aircraft to the Dutch East Indies: the AA units aboard WS14 were diverted again, sailing on 30 January and arriving at Batavia on Java on 3/4 February.

[75][76][77][78] Japanese landings on Java began on 1 March near Batavia, covered by bombing raids, with the airfields as their primary target.

'Blackforce', a mixed force of Australians and British commanded by Brig Arthur Blackburn, VC, kept up an active defence for several days, but the Dutch commander ordered his units to cease fire on 8 March, and the remnants of 16 AA Bde including 77th HAA Rgt surrendered on 12 March, after destroying their guns.

[45][71][75][76][79][80][81] The survivors of 77th (Welsh) HAA Regiment and the other British troops on Java spent the next three-and-a-half years as Prisoners of War (POWs), held in atrocious conditions.

After several more rounds of mergers the lineage is continued in 211 (South Wales) Bty in today's 104th Regiment Royal Artillery.

The church was destroyed by the Japanese, but the memorial was later found and re-hung in the Tabernacle Welsh Baptist Chapel, The Hayes, Cardiff.