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 may have 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 , what many thought , would be a German invasion of the United Kingdom . The invasion never took place , due mainly to the Battle of Britain.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
Le Paradis massacre
Le Paradis massacre
Royal Scots