The 1st Battalion landed at Boulogne in August 1914 as part of the 12th Brigade in the 4th Division of the British Expeditionary Force. It was nearly destroyed as a fighting unit at the Battle of Le Cateau on 26 August 1914, when it suffered some 400 casualties in a single two minute burst of machine gun fire. It served on the Western Front for the rest of the war. The 2nd Battalion returned from India in December 1914 and landed at Le Havre in January 1915 as part of the 83rd Brigade in the 28th Division. It took heavy casualties at the Battle of Frezenberg in May 1915 before moving to Egypt in October 1915 and then to Salonika.