The newly selected Service Battalion was formed into complete Companies, which consisted entirely of personnel volunteering for service overseas, and in which the men from each Company were kept as far as practicable together. The remaining Companies were made up from Units, kept together in the same way, provided by the 5th, 7th and 8th Battalions of the West Yorkshire Regiment. After some practice in night-entraining and other exercises, the Battalion moved on August 31st, and marched with 1st Line Transport to take its place in the Brigade: ‘a great change for the better,’ it is added. Next day, the Brigadier-General addressed the Territorial troops of the Brigade on the subject of voluntary active service abroad, and by September 15th the Battalion mustered 800 strong for overseas. Some strenuous weeks of training followed. On November 3rd, when the men were back in York, sounds of heavy firing in the North Sea raised a temporary alarm of German Dreadnoughts and Cruisers working North. ‘In two hours,’ we are told, ‘the Battalion was ready to move off with transport loaded’; so, down South, we might sleep o’ nights. At this date, too, we read of an ‘enormous improvement in the general behaviour of the N.C.O.’s and men. Conduct excellent in the town.’ We come to November 22nd, 1914. Half the Battalion moved to Redcar, complete with transport, ammunition and tools, on trench-digging duty. Their place was taken by five Home Service Companies, who arrived, it is observed, without greatcoats or equipment. On December 2nd, the Machine-Guns with their detachments were ordered to Redcar, and proceeded under Captain R. G. Fell. On the 10th, an exchange was effected between the four Reserve Companies and the half-battalion at Redcar, which returned accordingly to York. A new programme of training was arranged, which lasted through January, 1915, and on February 1st came a welcome leave for twenty per cent. of officers and other ranks. At the end of February, the Battalion moved to Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, to relieve the 4th Battalion K.O.Y.L.I., and were billeted on the inhabitants, four men in each dwellinghouse, ‘a change for the better’, remarks the diarist, ‘after being a platoon in a hired empty house at York’. The Battalion remained at Gainsborough till April 15th, when they proceeded in two trains to Folkestone, reaching Boulogne at 10-45 that night. Their transport and machine-guns, which had left Gainsborough the day before, and which travelled via Southampton and Havre, joined them at Boulogne. There for the present we may leave them to spend the night of the 15th in a Rest Camp, eight months and ten days after the order to mobilize had been received at Bradford.