Whose Name We Share

128 The Women of the 103 rd Battery Saint Barbara has been the patron saint of Artillery since the 17 th Century and is invoked by lightning strikes and accidents involving gunpowder. For her popularity surrounding lines of work involving sudden death her worship is also witnessed by tunnelers, miners and other jobs involved with explosives. A common practice at the opening of a mine was to dedicate a shrine to St Barbara at the commencement of the first tunnel, but this has since fallen out of favour. Most of Saint Barbara’s worship has taken a behind the scenes step as the world becomes more modernised and less concerned with the occult or supernatural. This is not to say that her place in Artillery is utterly irrelevant, because the 103 rd Battery has observed many St Barbara’s Day celebrations across the decades, oftentimes involving a day of games and competitions between batteries, regiments or sometimes the local CER unit (who shares the same patron saint). St Barbara, above all, serves to protect her subjects who invoke her.