The 256th Siege Battery was a heavy howitzer unit of Britain's Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) raised during World War I. It saw active service on the Western Front from early 1917 to the Armistice in 1918, participating in the battles of Arras and Passchendaele, against the German Spring Offensive, and in the final Allied Hundred Days Offensive.
Mobilisation and training
On the outbreak of war in August 1914, units of the part-time Territorial Force (TF) were invited to volunteer for Overseas Service, and most of the Liverpool-based Lancashire and Cheshire Royal Garrison Artillery (L&CRGA) did so. By October 1914, the campaign on the Western Front was bogging down into Trench warfare and there was an urgent need for batteries of siege artillery to be sent to France. The WO decided that the TF coastal gunners were well enough trained to take over many of the duties in the coastal defences, releasing Regular Army RGA gunners for service in the field, Soon the TF RGA companies that had volunteered for overseas service were also supplying trained gunners to RGA units serving overseas and providing cadres to form complete units with 'New Army' (Kitchener's Army) volunteers.
256th Siege Bty was formed at Crosby Battery, Hightown, near Liverpool, on 13 September 1916 with a cadre of 44 men provided by the L&CRGA, the remainder of the personnel being posted to it from the RGA depot at Clipstone camp. Captain N.N. Maas of the L&CRGA was appointed to command the battery with the rank of Temporary Major.
The battery began its training under the supervision of the Commander, Royal Artillery, Mersey Defences, then on 20 November moved to North Camp at Aldershot, where it was accommodated in Tournay Barracks. At Aldershot it was joined by 22 signallers from the training depot at Catterick Camp. On 8 January it moved to the RGA training camp at Lydd, then on 19 January it went to Charlton Park, near Woolwich, where it was equipped with four Vickers Mark VI 8-inch howitzers and mobilised for overseas service. The guns, lorries and Holt caterpillar gun tractors went to Portsmouth on 6 February for shipping to France aboard SS Huntscape, and the rest of the battery embarked at Folkestone Harbour on 8 February, landing at Boulogne the same afternoon.
Service
On arrival in France the battery, with the drivers of 153rd Heavy Artillery Motor Transport Section, Army Service Corps (ASC), went by rail and road to Le Hamel, where they first joined 65th Heavy Artillery Group (HAG) in VI Corps' Heavy Artillery under Third Army but transferred on 18 February to 22nd HAG. The battery was assigned gun positions along the avenue of a chateau near St Vaast which had previously be used by a battery of 9.2-inch howitzers and required little modification. The officers and men were billeted in the chateau. Preparations were completed and the battery fired its first registration rounds, with aircraft observation, on 24 March. For the rest of the month it continued registration shoots, carried out its first Counter-battery (CB) task, and bombarded enemy trenches in the Tilloy-lès-Mofflaines area.