About: Hull Rifles

The Hull Rifles, later the 4th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment, was a unit of Britain's Volunteer Force first raised in Kingston upon Hull in 1859. During World War I it served on the Western front, seeing a great deal of action at Ypres, the Somme (where it was one of the first infantry units ever to cooperate with tanks), Arras, and in the German spring offensive, when it was virtually destroyed. Its 2nd Line battalion garrisoned Bermuda for much of the war. During World War II the 4th Battalion was captured at the Battle of Gazala, but its wartime duplicate unit fought on through the Western Desert, Tunisia and Sicily, and then landed in Normandy on D Day. The battalion served in the postwar Territorial Army until 1960, and its successors in today's Army Reserve continue in Hull.