At the outbreak of the Second World War on 3 September 1939, the 1st Battalion, Royal Scots was at Aldershot as part of 4th Infantry Brigade, alongside the 1st Border Regiment and 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division; accordingly, it deployed to France with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). It moved to Lecelles in September, and in May 1940 moved into Belgium during the Battle of France. The BEF were heavily hit by the German Army's breakthrough, however, and fell back towards the coast; the battalion was deployed at Le Paradis, near Béthune, on 25 May to protect the flanks of the Dunkirk evacuation. After being heavily hit by armoured attacks, the battalion ceased fighting on the afternoon of 27 May. The adjacent unit, the 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolks, had almost one hundred men taken prisoner and later shot by their captors in the Le Paradis massacre. Recent research has suggested that around twenty Royal Scots suffered a similar fate. The remnants of the battalion were reconstituted in Bradford in June. After Dunkirk, the battalion spent nearly two years on home defence preparing for a potential German invasion of the United Kingdom. The 1st Royal Scots, along with the rest of the 2nd Division, was sent to British India in April 1942 to train for jungle warfare.