The Wartime Memories Project

- 28th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery during the Great War -


Great War>Allied Army
skip to content


This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this site you agree to accept cookies.


If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.



    Site Home

    Great War Home

    Search

    Add Stories & Photos

    Library

    Help & FAQs

 Features

    Allied Army

    Day by Day

    RFC & RAF

    Prisoners of War

    War at Sea

    Training for War

    The Battles

    Those Who Served

    Hospitals

    Civilian Service

    Women at War

    The War Effort

    Central Powers Army

    Central Powers Navy

    Imperial Air Service

    Library

    World War Two

 Submissions

    Add Stories & Photos

    Time Capsule

 Information

    Help & FAQs



    Glossary

    Our Facebook Page

    Volunteering

    News

    Events

    Contact us

    Great War Books

    About


Advertisements

World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment

28th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery



   28th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery proceeded to France on the 4th of September 1915.

The Siege Batteries were deployed behind the front line, tasked with destroying enemy artillery, supply routes, railways and stores. The batteries were equipped with heavy Howitzer guns firing large calibre 4, 6, 8 or 9.2 inch shells in a high trajectory.

21st of September 1915 Catapults Active  location map

13th Apr 1916  Equipment

If you can provide any additional information, please add it here.





Want to know more about 28th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery?


There are:5232 items tagged 28th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery available in our Library

  These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Great War.


Those known to have served with

28th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery

during the Great War 1914-1918.

  • Heatley Frederick. Gnr. (d.26th Jul 1917)
  • Sadler John William. Gnr.

All names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List

Records of 28th Siege Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery from other sources.


  • The Wartime Memories Project is the original WW1 and WW2 commemoration website.

  • 1st of September 2023 marks 24 years since the launch of the Wartime Memories Project. Thanks to everyone who has supported us over this time.

Want to find out more about your relative's service? Want to know what life was like during the Great War? Our Library contains many many diary entries, personal letters and other documents, most transcribed into plain text.



Looking for help with Family History Research?   

Please see Family History FAQ's

Please note: We are unable to provide individual research.

Can you help?

The free to access section of The Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers and funded by donations from our visitors.

If the information here has been helpful or you have enjoyed reaching the stories please conside making a donation, no matter how small, would be much appreciated, annually we need to raise enough funds to pay for our web hosting or this site will vanish from the web.

If you enjoy this site please consider making a donation.


Announcements

  • 22nd April 2024

        Please note we currently have a massive backlog of submitted material, our volunteers are working through this as quickly as possible and all names, stories and photos will be added to the site. If you have already submitted a story to the site and your UID reference number is higher than 263973 your submission is still in the queue, please do not resubmit.

      Wanted: Digital copies of Group photographs, Scrapbooks, Autograph books, photo albums, newspaper clippings, letters, postcards and ephemera relating to the Great War. If you have any unwanted photographs, documents or items from the First or Second World War, please do not destroy them. The Wartime Memories Project will give them a good home and ensure that they are used for educational purposes. Please get in touch for the postal address, do not sent them to our PO Box as packages are not accepted.





      We are now on Facebook. Like this page to receive our updates, add a comment or ask a question.

      If you have a general question please post it on our Facebook page.


      World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great battalion regiment artillery
      Did you know? We also have a section on World War Two. and a Timecapsule to preserve stories from other conflicts for future generations.






252217

Gnr. Frederick Heatley 405th Siege Battery Royal Garrison Artillery (d.26th Jul 1917)

Frederick Heatley was born on 16th August 1892 in Carlisle to James and Catherine Heatley, shortly after that his family moved to Manchester. Frederick married Ann Burnside on the 11th September 1911. The couple had 3 children (Frederick, Joseph and Jane).

Frederick signed up for the Royal Garrison Artillery on 16th November 1914, he was 23 years and 3 months old. He was sent to Weymouth on the 4th December 1914 and joined the 30th Siege Battery in February 1915. In March he moved to the 28th Siege Battery and was sent to France with the British Expeditionary Force on 11th of August 1915.

He was imprisoned for 1 month in June 1916 for being Absent without leave, drunkenness and conduct to the prejudice of good order. While confined he damaged his cell and was ordered to pay 20 Francs in damages. Frederick's soldier's record states that he developed haemoptysis (coughing up blood) in the field on 21st October 1916 and was sent to England from Boulogne on the ship HS Jan Breydel. He returned back to depot then on to Tilshead in Wiltshire, following which he joined the 405th Siege Battery in March 1917.

Gunner Heatley died on 26th of July 1917, he is buried at Lindehoek Chalet Military Cemetery, Kemmel in Belgium.

Deborah Aspland




243617

Gnr. John William Sadler 28th Siege Battery Royal Garrison Artillery

John Sadler enlisted in the British Army in November of 1914, he was wounded on four occasions before being discharged following the Armistice on the 11th November 1918. His army records show that he served with the 28th Siege Battery for most of his enlisted term but appears to have been transferred to a heavy Battery sometime during 1918.

Only two amusing anecdotes were often related within the family, as follows:

During the first days of training a new Sgt Major was gathering many hundreds of troops on the parade ground, as the men almost settled into their respective alphabetical groups, determined by the first letter of their surname, the Sgt Major eyed one man dashing about trying to locate his group, and barked out what was his surname, the man replied 'Phillips' Sgt Major, to which the Sgt quickly pointed to a group and shouted "the F's are that group there man".

After Armistice day there were millions of men waiting to be transported back to England, and the army was not going to have men idle and it was determined to keep them occupied during the waiting period. Officers from their respective battalions were told to organise men under their control into a variety of work parties, filling in shell holes on the roads or clearing destroyed buildings and the like. The group of men from Gnr Sadler's Siege Battery were being called to gather around an officer who then asked were any musicians among the troops, many hands were raised and men called out the instrument they played, and the chap standing next to my grandfather told him to put up his hand, if the officer asked what instrument he played, simply tell him he played the triangle, after all it was better than filling in shell holes or similar hard work. Having collected about a dozen so called musicians, the officer marched them to the home of a local mayor where they were told it was not their musical talents that were required, it was to physically move an iron frame Grand Piano two hundred yards to the village hall for use in an up-coming official gathering by the locals to say thank you and goodbye to the troops.







Recomended Reading.

Available at discounted prices.









Links


    Suggest a link
















    The free section of The Wartime Memories Project is run by volunteers.

    This website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions.

    If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running.


    Hosted by:

    The Wartime Memories Project Website

    is archived for preservation by the British Library





    Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV
    - All Rights Reserved -

    We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.