In July 1899 the Royal Artillery divided it's self in to two separate Corps. The mounted branch of the Royal Horse and Royal Field Artillery, and the dismounted branch, Royal Garrison Artillery.

As I understand it, the Horse and Field Artillery batteries were seen as the units to be in if you wanted promotion to the higher echelons of the Royal Artillery. Consequently many officers tried to avoid coastal, mountain, and heavy artillery batteries. The latter also required officers of a more technical nature, so quite a bit to learn, which I suppose would interfere with the hunting, shooting and fishing.

So, form two corps, RHA / RFA, fast mobile warfare, direct fire over open sights, good exciting stuff. Coastal Artillery, positional warfare (apart from the odd mountain campaign), technical gunnery, but nice big guns to fire.

So what about our Gunners at the beginning of 1914 ?

A look at the station of units:

RHA / RFA - Bulford, Newcastle, Sheffield, Glasgow, Aldershot, Woolwich - ok India could be interesting

RGA - Malta. Barbados, Ceylon, Hong Kong Sierra Leone - ok you may end up in Tynemouth as the wind whips in off the north sea temperatures plummeting (in summer).

So Bulford and exercises on Salisbury Plain, with the RFA or Barbados with the RGA ?

Difficult choice !!