in 1914, Colonel Sam Hughes, Canada's Minister of Militia, scrapped the original national mobilisation plan and asked the commanding officers of Militia units for volunteers to serve with battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF). Consequently, many members of the 13th Royal Regiment went overseas with the 4th Battalion, CEF, part of the famous First Contingent. Throughout the war, the unit served as a depot regiment that enrolled and trained men before despatching them to deploying CEF battalions. The CEF was not the only destination, either; the Royal Flying Corps accepted 82 men from the 13th, and 81 went to the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. Locally raised CEF battalions that received soldiers from the 13th included the 19th Battalion, CEF (145 men), 36th Battalion, CEF (124 men), 76th Battalion, CEF (506 men), 86th (Machine Gun) Battalion, CEF (600 men), 120th (City of Hamilton) Battalion, CEF (625 men) and the 205th (Tiger) Battalion, CEF (704 men). Of these, the 120th (City of Hamilton) Battalion CEF had the closest affiliation with the 13th Royal Regiment, so on 28 May 1916, that battalion formally accepted the regiment's colours and took them overseas. The colours were laid up in Westminster Abbey until 5 March 1919, when the Dean of Westminster returned them to veterans of the 120th (City of Hamilton) Battalion, which was broken up to reinforce other CEF battalions in 1917. In the interwar period, the Canadian Militia underwent two major reorganisations (in 1920 and again in 1936) and several minor ones. The Hamilton area did not escape, and in 1920 the two most significant RHLI antecedents acquired new names: The Royal Hamilton Regiment and The Wentworth Regiment. In 1927, the former became the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, and the final reorganisation in 1936 brought all but one company of the Wentworth Regiment into the RHLI, which then received its current title: The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (Wentworth Regiment). To this day, the regiment is informally known as the Rileys. History 1939–1945 On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, all the units of the Non-Permanent Active Militia of Canada were mobilised for overseas service. (This was not done in 1899 or 1914 because the original terms of sovereignty under the British North America Act-amended by the Statute of Westminster in 1931-did not include authority to deploy troops outside Canadian territory.) The Rileys were mobilised with the Canadian Active