At the outbreak of the Second World War, the 1st Battalion, Loyal Regiment were part of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, which also included, in addition to 1st Loyals, the 2nd Battalion, North Staffordshire Regiment and the 1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders (6th Gordons from early March 1940). The brigade was attached to the 1st Infantry Division. In September 1939 they were sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and remained there alongside the French Army until May 1940. The 1st Loyals would participate in the fighting in France and Belgium in 1940, including acting as part of the rearguard for the Dunkirk evacuation during the Battle of Dunkirk. After spending two years on home defence, the 1st Loyals would eventually would see action again as part of the British First Army, fighting in the North African Campaign, in the Tunisia Campaign in early 1943, and Italian Campaign and at the Battle of Anzio where the 1st Division saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war, and 1st Loyals lost a company during a German counterattack but managed to repel them. In May the battalion fought in the breakout of the Anzio bridgehead, Operation Diadem also fought in the battles around the Gothic Line throughout the summer, now as part of the British Eighth Army. The battalion, along with the rest of the 1st Division, were sent to Palestine in January 1945. During the fighting in the Tunisian campaign, in April 1943, Lieutenant Willward Alexander Sandys-Clarke was posthumously awarded the regiment's only Victoria Cross of the war.