Royal Artillery Memorial

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Royal Artillery Memorial is a large stone memorial at Hyde Park Corner in London dedicated to casualties in the British Royal Regiment of Artillery in World War I.

Designed by Charles Jagger (1885-1934) and dedicated in 1925, the memorial is in the form of a giant sculpture of a howitzer upon a large plinth of Portland marble, with stone reliefs depicting the reality of war.

There are four bronze figures of artillery soldiers on the memorial as part of scenes relecting the reality of war.

One is of an artilleryman reading letters from home. One is of a dead artilleryman, his body covered by a greatcoat. Underneath is are inscribed the words Here was a Royal fellowship of Death from Shakespeare's Henry V.

The main inscription reads:

'In Proud Rememberance Of The
Forty-Nine Thousand & Seventy-Six
Of All Ranks Of The
Royal Regiment of Artillery
Who Gave Their Lives for King
And Country in the Great War
1914—1919'

In 1949, three bronze panels (by Darcy Braddell) were added in memory of the 30,000 of the Royal Artillery killed in World War II. It is also purported that if the artillery piece were able to be fired, the barrel of the sculpture is angled and directed such that a shell would fall in the Somme region of France.