During the Second World War, he joined the British Army and took part in the Dunkirk evacuation before returning to England; he resumed his league career and played many wartime charity games.
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After the Civil War he was in France early in the Second World War and was present at the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, before being captured and sent by the Nazis to Mauthausen concentration camp.
In 1941, he joined the Royal Engineers, but the following year was commissioned in the Coldstream Guards (with which members of his family had served since 1769, including his brothers George and Evelyn, who had been killed during the withdrawal from Dunkirk) of the Guards Armoured Division and was sent to the cavalry wing of Sandhurst to train as a tank commander.
The fall of France had not been anticipated in Government planning and the encirclement of a large part of the British Expeditionary Force into the Dunkirk pocket resulted in a hasty evacuation of that part of the B.E.F following the abandonment of their equipment.
He was recalled in World War II to serve as a beachmaster for the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940, as a member of the expeditionary force to Narvik in Norway in 1942 and then as Director of Training for the Commandos.
Following the Dunkirk evacuation the Regiment was based in Yorkshire, until in 1942 they were sent out to the Far East and attached to the 2nd Division, seeing service in India and Burma, including the Battle of the Arakan.