The Wessex (Hampshire) Heavy Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery was a volunteer unit of the British Territorial Force formed in 1908.

[1][2][3][4] TF heavy batteries of the RGA were each equipped with four Boer War-era 4.7-inch guns and included their own ammunition column.

[2][3][5] On 24 September, at the special request of Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, the 1st Wessex Division accepted liability for service in India in order to relieve Regular troops from garrison duty there.

[4] Similarly, on 25 November the War Office decided to send the 2nd Wessex Division, although untrained, to India to release further Regular forces for service on the Western Front.

[5] The Regular troops arriving from India had no supporting arms, and so TF units provided these for the new divisions that were being formed.

The 1/1st Wessex Heavy Battery sent eight officers and 170 other ranks to the 28th Division to form the Divisional Ammunition Column, which mobilised at Slough on 29 December and embarked for France on 17 January 1915.

This 2nd Line formation had just assembled at its war station around Hemel Hempstead to take its place in Third Army, Central Force.

[4][7][8][9] HAGs were composed of various mixtures of heavy guns and howitzers and were assigned to Army and Corps HQs for counter-battery fire and direct bombardment of targets.

[14] At the Battle of the Sambre on 4 November, XVII Corps of Third Army achieved complete success supported by overwhelming weight of artillery, including 86th Bde.

[15] At the time of the Armistice with Germany on 11 November 1918, 1/1st Wessex Hy Bty was still in 86 (Mobile) Bde, RGA, now as part of Second Army.