page_title: 7th Infantry Division (United Kingdom)
section_title: First World War
hierarchical_section_title: 7th Infantry Division (United Kingdom) / First World War
caption_attribution_description: English: The Battle of the Somme, July-november 1916 Battle of the Ancre Heights. Column of the 2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders marching to the trenches along the Becordel-Fricourt road, October 1916.
context_page_description: The 7th Infantry Division was an infantry division of the British Army, first established by The Duke of Wellington as part of the Anglo-Portuguese Army for service in the Peninsular War, and was active also during the First World War from 1914–1919, and in the Second World War from 1938–1939 in Palestine and Egypt.
context_section_description: The 7th Division was a Regular Army formation that was formed in September 1914 by combining units returning from garrison outposts in the British Empire at the outbreak of the First World War the previous month. The division landed at Zeebrugge in Belgium on 6 October 1914 in an attempt to support the Belgian Army’s defence of Antwerp, but was soon forced to retreat south-west as that city fell a few days later. It then played a crucial part in the stabilisation of the front during the First Battle of Ypres, preventing a German breakthrough, although at a high cost in terms of casualties. A floating division, the 7th was the first British Division to enter Ypres on 14 October.  It was ordered to hold the line, while General French brought up his remaining six divisions and redeployed them from the Aisne to the sea.  The division held an 8 mile front for two weeks, opposite some 340,000 Germans.  Some 18,000 soldiers strong on 15 October, the 7th left the line on 31 October, with just 2,000 troops remaining, mostly transport and supply.
  The 7th Division fought in most of the major battles on the Western Front through to 1917 before being sent to the Italian Front for the remainder of the war. At the battle of Loos in late 1915, the division’s General Officer Commanding (GOC), Major-General Thompson Capper, was killed in action at the height of the fighting. Unlike the first six regular divisions of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), a third of whose strength was made up of regular reservists, the 7th Division was originally composed entirely of serving regular soldiers, which gave rise to the division's nickname, ‘The Immortal Seventh’.
caption: Column of the 2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders marching to the trenches along the Becordel–Fricourt road, France, October 1916.
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