The 2nd Battalion, Sherwood Foresters was serving in the 3rd Infantry Brigade, part of the 1st Infantry Division, with which the battalion would remain with throughout the war. The division was sent to France in September 1939 shortly after the outbreak of the war, joining the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). The battalion remained in France until May 1940 when the Germans invaded the Low Countries. They took part in the short but bitter fighting and were forced to be evacuated at Dunkirk as the BEF was in danger of being surrounded and overrun. They were evacuated to England and spent the next two years on home defence and in preparation for a German invasion which never arrived. In early 1943 the division was sent to North Africa where it became part of the British First Army and took part in the final stages of the Tunisian Campaign. In January 1944, they took part in the landings at Anzio, under command of U.S. Fifth Army, where they suffered extremely heavy casualties in some of the fiercest fighting of the Italian Campaign so far, and later fighting during Operation Diadem and on the Gothic Line. They fought in Italy until January 1945 when they were sent to Palestine and remained there until the end of the war.