page_title: Sunderland Rifles
section_title: Passchendaele
hierarchical_section_title: Sunderland Rifles / World War I / 1/7th Battalion / Passchendaele
caption_attribution_description: English: Canadian Pioneers laying trench mats over mud.
context_page_description: The Sunderland Rifles was a Volunteer unit of the British Army formed in 1860. It went on to become a Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry in the Territorial Force and saw action as infantry and pioneers in some of the bloodiest actions on the Western Front during World War I. Between the wars it became an air defence unit, serving during World War II in The Blitz and the campaign in North West Europe, when it had a special role in the Rhine crossing. Postwar it continued in the Territorial Army in the air defence role until 1975, when its successor unit reverted to infantry.
context_section_description: On 24 October the battalion moved into White Mill Camp at Elverdinghe in the Ypres sector, A and B Companies later moving to Red Rose Camp. The work was to maintain the constantly-shelled tracks and complete a duckboard track known as 'Railway Street' while the rest of the division took part in the Second Battle of Passchendaele The camps were regularly shelled and bombed, and the Lewis gun detachment took up forward positions to deal with low-flying aircraft. On the night of 31 October/1 November the camp and divisional area received a heavy bombing raid and the battalion suffered numerous casualties.
  After the Third Battle of Ypres petered out in the mud of Passchendaele, the division was relieved on 30 November, but the pioneers remained behind to carry on the work. It rejoined the division on 12 December and spent the winter building tracks through the terrible mud up the Passchendaele ridge, continuing to work when the division was relieved on 6 January 1918. This work included burying telephone cables and clearing captured enemy pillboxes.
caption: Pioneers laying duckboards at Passchendaele
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