The Territorial soldiers of 1914 entered the army motivated by an array of different factors ranging from a sense of local patriotism to fulfilling a desire for adventure. Few were prepared for the nature of the war they encountered and few had any comprehension of how long they would be in uniform. Trench warfare was something outside the realm of all previous experience and as such could not fail to impact on the initial attitudes of the Territorials. Through charting the wartime behaviour of both Battalions between 1914 and 1918 we can begin to understand how far their ideals and attitudes were changed by the experience of war.

By October 1914, the regular army was dangerously short of manpower and a number of Territorial divisions, including the West Lancashire Division, were plundered for units to be deployed on the Western Front. The Liverpool Scottish crossed the Channel in November 1914 as part of the first wave of reinforcements and was incorporated into the 3rd Division. They were chosen because of their pre-war reputation as an efficient battalion, although there were many private doubts as to the readiness of the unit. The Rifles followed a few months later in February 1915 and joined the 5th Division.

Although the Battalions arrived three months apart and the men of the Liverpool Scottish were forced to endure the winter of 1914–15 in the trenches, the initial period of acclimatization and the attitudes expressed by soldiers followed a similar pattern.