Lloyd became a reserve officer in 1937. In January 1939 he helped to raise a second line unit of the Royal Horse Artillery in the North-West. He was commissioned as a regular second lieutenant on 27 June 1939, and by August, with war seeming ever more likely, he was an acting captain and acting brigade major to Brigadier Cherry, CRA (Commander, Royal Artillery) of the 55th (West Lancashire) Infantry Division, a first-line Territorial Army formation. His obituary in "The Times" later stated wrongly that he had begun the war as a private.