Lawson's Company held the unique record of having been the only Royal Artillery unit to serve throughout the entire Peninsular War, from 1808 until 1814.

The Company took part in the famous crossing of the Douro river, the capture of Porto, the pursuit of Marshal Soult's army to Braga and the desperate fight at the Battle of Talavera.

In the winter of 1809, the unit was based at Badajoz, however, the next year the Battery accompanied the now Lord Wellington in his campaign, which included the encounter at the Battle of Bussaco and also the retreat of the Lines of Torres Vedras.

The battery was replenished six months later with 6-pounders, and fought a hard battle at Salamanca, suffering casualties whilst in action, and at the Siege of Burgos, before the retreat to Portugal.

The battery took part in the Siege of San Sebastián where Capt Johnson and a number of men from the unit were sent into the breach with the infantry in order to seize enemy artillery pieces.

Captain Robert Lawson's Company, 8th Battalion Royal Artillery, left Spain on 22 July 1814 on board HMS Hydra bound for Plymouth.

The company was not sent overseas to fight at the Waterloo, but moved in 1821 to Gibraltar and later to Corfu, then part of the British governed United States of the Ionian Islands.

It was based there during the Greek War of Independence and a period of tense relations with the Ottoman Empire which lead to a number of engagements at sea in the area.

The battery was deploy to South Africa for the Boer War in December 1900 and saw action Eastern Transvaal mostly in sections or single guns working with small mobile columns.

It spent the war fighting in the relatively small battlefields of France and Belgium, in extremely poor conditions in the trenches of the First Battle of the Aisne, Somme, Ypres, Cambrai and the Hindenburg Line.

Between 21 and 22 March 1918, the battery returned to the Somme and helped win a crushing defeat on the Kaiser's army at the Battle of St. Quentin (1918).

During the war the battery was an early adopter of air land integration; working on several occasions with 6 Squadron Royal Flying Corps (now No.

The battery returned to their barracks in Ireland just as the Irish War of Independence broke out and were involved in fighting the rebels as part of flying columns.

Between 1944 and 1945, the battery was in action in Tunisia and Italy, in support of 31 infantry brigade, during the Anzio bridgehead and the push north through Florence towards Bologna.

Lawson's Company was loaded onto the transport ship HMS Theseus, deploying to Cyprus in preparation for operations as part of the Suez Crisis.

In 1971, the battery deployed to Derry, and suffered a number of casualties due to shootings and bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

A year later, Lawson's Company returned to Northern Ireland based at the Long Kesh prison and surrounding area.

6 Squadron RAF, as a result of their cooperation had long held the motto 'the eyes of the Army' and still to this day carry a 'Gunner Stripe' featuring the Royal Artillery's Zig Zag motif on their aircraft.

The Battery cross-decked to the P&O Cruiser SS Canberra and sailed for Port San Carlos, inside the Falkland Sound, arriving 2 June 1982.

The unit later augmented 4th Royal Tank Regiment in Cyprus and undertook a further tour of Northern Ireland at Middletown and Keady.

Their final deployment to Afghanistan was Operation HERRICK 17 (Oct 2012- Mar 2013) during which the Battery was attached to 1st (Cheshire) Battalion of the Mercian Regiment.