15 Ypres On the first day of September 1916 the recon party would move forward to select Battery positions for the preparations of moving further into the front line. They selected a spot in the vicinity of Ouderdom, Belgium. All Batteries of the Brigade would do this independently and make their own preparations to ready themselves to move into the frontline. Once the batteries were firm it was time to register. Registration firing began on the 3rd September, continuing through until the 8th. The details were then passed onto the wider brigade, but there was the constant threat of counter battery fire. The 103rd Battery fired back at an enemy gun position on the 11th of September, silencing them in the process. With small victories littered throughout, the battery would be relieved by the 105th Battery before falling back to Ouderdom on the 14th of September. During their short stay on the front lines they would end up firing 446 HE rounds. The arrival of October saw the Germans step up their retaliations. The war so far had been brutal and unforgiving, constant shelling happening on both sides as well as the constant charges made by the British and Australians. It was a war of attrition littered with barrages and often pyrrhic victories, which had little to show in terms of ground gained. On the 8th of October the Germans fired a heavy mission consisting of 36 4.2” shells and the 103rd Battery retaliated with 21 rounds. There was a constant back and forth like this as the once beautiful greenery of France turned to fields of mud and debris. The following day the Brigade itself would retaliate with several missions. This was to suppress the intermittent and erratic firing coming from the German lines. The German’s didn’t seem to target any one area in particular as their missions fell onto scattered areas of the Brigade’s lines. On each and every occasion the Brigade
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