6th Armoured Motor Battery

Rolls Royce armoured car of the 6th Armoured Motor Battery with turret mounted Vickers machine gun in camp (probably Lembet road) Salonika.

When the Machine Gun Corps was formed in October 1915 a Motor Branch was created with a number of special units including Motor Cycle Batteries and Armoured Car Batteries. The 6th Armoured Motor Battery (probably formed in Egypt from a disbanded RNAS unit) had three officers and 46 other ranks, 4 Rolls Royce armoured cars, each equipped with one Vickers machine gun mounted in a turret, and possibly a staff car and a lorry. The first two cars of 6th A.M.B. arrived in Salonika January 1916, the personnel and the second two cars arrived shortly afterward. By the summer they had moved up country with XVI Corps to the Struma valley section of the line and were probably camped somewhere along the Seres road. In October 1916 they provided machine gun support during the successful actions across the river Struma to take villages of Karajakoi Bala, Karajakoi Zir and Yenikoi.

In May 1917 the 801st inspected the vehicles of the 6th Armoured Motor Battery, just a month before the unit left for Mesopotamia. Now referred to as the 6th Light Armoured Motor Battery, they were part of the successful campaign, through 1917 and 1918, that took, Tikrit, Hit, Kirkuk, Baku and Mosul, contributing significantly to the defeat of Turkey in October 1918.