The Battery became a Tactical Group Battery in 2005, with its guns firing their last rounds in
Otterburn in February 2005.
2006 – L/N (Nery) Battery (The Eagle Troop) RHA split to reform separately as L and N Batteries. N Battery returned to
3 RHA to become their Tactical Group Battery and L Battery became 1 RHA's Tactical Group Battery – supporting the
HCR,
1st Mech BdeFormation Reconnaissance Regiment.
Battery structure
L (Nery) Battery are known as a Tactical Group Battery and they consist of approximately 30 personnel:
1857 - The Battery was distinguished with service in the
Indian Mutiny, when in action on 7 July 1857,
Gunner William Connolly who was repeatedly injured, refused to leave his post on the gun. He was awarded L Battery's first
Victoria Cross.
1889 - the Battery was renamed L Battery Royal Horse Artillery.
1914 - The
Action at Néry. On the morning of 1 September 1914 the German 4th Cavalry Division attacked 1st Cavalry Brigade and L Battery, who had been camped in the village of
Néry. In the action that followed, L Battery, less for one gun, was all but destroyed. The
13-pounder gun manned by
Captain Bradbury,
WO2 Dorrell,
Sergeant Nelson, and Gunners Osbourne and Darbyshire, managed to keep the single gun in action against the three German Batteries located a thousand yards away. The Artillery fire put down by this gun allowed the
1st Cavalry Brigade to deliver a successful
Counter attack. For this action
Captain Bradbury,
WO2 Dorrell,
Sergeant Nelson, were all awarded the
Victoria Cross.
World War Two
L (Nery) Battery served with distinction during WW2 in North Africa and Italy.
Clarke, W.G. (1993). Horse Gunners: The Royal Horse Artillery, 200 Years of Panache and Professionalism. Woolwich: The Royal Artillery Institution.
ISBN09520762-0-9.