The TA's war deployment plan envisioned the divisions being deployed, as equipment became available, to reinforce the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) already dispatched to Europe. The TA would join regular army divisions in waves as its divisions completed their training, the final divisions deploying a year after the war began. The 59th Division spent the early months of the war training new recruits including conscripts; a task made difficult by the need for the division to provide guards for important locations, and a severe shortage of equipment and trained officers and non-commissioned officers. On 1 December 1939, Major-General Thomas Ralph Eastwood, previously the commandant of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, took command of the division and held this position until May 1940. During this period, the 1/6SSR was the only element of the division to go abroad. It was dispatched to France, while officially remaining part of the division's 177th Brigade, as part of the attempt to address manpower shortages among the BEF's rear-echelon units, and its personnel were utilised in a pioneer capacity digging anti-tank ditches and constructing breastworks. The battalion was caught up in the latter stages of the Battle of France and the withdrawal to Dunkirk harbour; on 2 June, the battalion was evacuated via the harbour's mole. The rest of the division was not deployed, and as a result of the evacuation was not deployed to France per the original deployment timeline.