The 4th (Special Reserve) Battalion were initially posted to the Felixstowe and Harwich garrisons but were mobilised in July 1916, joining the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division on the Western Front that month. It was engaged from the Battle of the Ancre in November 1916, to the "Passage of the Grande Honnelle" during the "Hundred Days Offensives"; its last shots being fired in anger on 10 November 1918. Acting Lieutenant-Colonel John Stanhope Collings-Wells won a posthumous Victoria Cross in March 1918 whilst commanding the battalion through the German Spring Offensive (Operation Michael).