Northumbrian (North Riding) Heavy Battery RGA

More snapshots from Major Stubbs' album:

Aldershot 1917

Major Stubbs was posted at Aldershot for some months in 1917 and 1918

RAMC Newcastle 1915

RGA 4,7 gun 1915

RGA in training 1915

Major Stubbs, Newcastle 1915

Major Stubbs i/c Siege School, Aldershot c1917

'The Silver King', Eastbourne 1915

Trumpeter Jones on Taffy

Northumbrian (North Riding) Heavy Battery RGA before the War

Snapshots from Major Stubbs' album.
Unfortunately they are not dated and only a few names are recorded, but they are thought to be from a pre-War Camp some time in 1913 or 1914.

George W.W. Barnley (Middlesbrough solicitor) is second from left.
Francis Dalrymple (adjutant) is seated on the gun

Major Stubbs' daughter has added (years later) a note to this photograph:

"The Hairy Heels" (Horselines) (eight of these to each gun)

War Horse

Major Stubbs' horse, Jess.

Jess joined the North Riding Heavy Battery August 1914 at Monkseaton as the Battery Commander's Charger at the outbreak of war.
She went overseas with the Battery in April 1915.
She was wounded by a splinter of shell in May 1918.
She died at the Veterinary Clearing Station in May [or June, according to the note on the reverse of the photo] 1918.
Photo was taken at St Omer, February 1917

Driver J.F.S. Wallace was her groom.  He took her down to the Clearing Station and stayed with her till the end.

War begins - Nunthorpe, 1914

Thomas Duncan Henlock (“Duncan”) Stubbs was a 42 year old Middlesbrough solicitor when war broke out.  He lived with his wife and family in the little rural hamlet that had grown up around Nunthorpe railway station.  As a Captain in the Territorial Army in the Northumbrian (Heavy) Battery, Royal Garrison Artillery, he was called up immediately.  

He began to keep a diary.  It begins on Tuesday 4 August 1914 and it is written in ink and pencil on lined foolscap paper.  It appears to be a fair copy, with additions and alterations, presumably (given the detail involved) from notes made at the time.  He was a methodical man.

Extracts from the first ten days of the diary follow.  They give a vivid picture of public reaction at the beginning of the War, on Teesside and Tyneside.


It begins with a summary of events in Europe:

1914.
Tuesday 4th August

For a week past there has been talk of war.  Austria’s declaration of War against Servia has started the ball rolling […]

Britain calls upon [Germany] to declare that the neutrality of Belgium shall be preserved.  Germany declines stating that to do so would disclose an important part of her plan of campaign […] 

The British fleet is fully mobilized, the reserves, even the Dartmouth cadets, are called up and about 7pm on Tuesday 4th August 1914 the order goes forth for the general mobilization of the whole British Army.

and then Duncan Stubbs begins to document his own experiences:

This is a purely personal account of my own doings as Captain in the Northumbrian North Riding Heavy Battery, which Battery I have had the honour of commanding for about 12 months past.