Royal Canadian Regiment. As with soldiers of the British Territorial Force (including the BVRC and BMA), Canadian Militia soldiers were recruited for home defence, and could not be compelled to serve overseas. Consequently, the soldiers of the RCR were asked to volunteer as a unit to the deployment. The unit relieved the 2 Lincolns at Prospect Camp on 13 September 1914. It would use the next eleven months in Bermuda to train in preparation for the Western Front. When it was deployed across the Atlantic on 13 August 1915, it was replaced by the 38th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). When this battalion, too, deployed to the European theatre of conflict, it was replaced by the 163rd (French-Canadian) Battalion CEF, which arrived there on 29 May 1916. It was replaced by a British Territorial Force unit, the 2/4th Battalion, East Yorkshire Regiment on 18 November 1916, and departed for Europe on 27 November 1916. The 2/4th East Yorks remained in Bermuda for the duration of the war. On the declaration of War in 1914, the BMA was already embodied for annual training and moved onto a war footing. The BVRC embodied, and both units took up their wartime roles. Many Bermudians also enlisted or were commissioned into other British Army units in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and in dominion military units, the latter including a significant number of Bermudians in the CEF. The BMA immediately began the process of forming a contingent of volunteers in 1914 to be despatched to the Western Front, but was prevented from doing so. However, two contingents eventually served as part of the larger Royal Garrison Artillery detachment to the Western Front. The first, 201 officers and men, under the command of Major Thomas Melville Dill (who handed overall command of the BMA to a subordinate in order to lead the overseas contingent), left for France on 31 May 1916. A second contingent, of two officers and sixty other ranks, left Bermuda on 6 May 1917, and was merged with the first contingent in France. The contingent, titled the Bermuda Contingent, Royal Garrison Artillery, served primarily in ammunition supply, at dumps, and in delivering ammunition to batteries in the field. The Contingent served at the Somme from June to December 1916. They were then moved away from the Front, serving on docks until April, 1917, when they were attached to the Canadian