[1] All personnel complete the Pre Parachute Selection (P Company) course at the Infantry Training Centre Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire (previously at Aldershot, Hampshire).

Finally, in September 1944, the battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel David Dobie, dropped into Arnhem the Netherlands with the rest of the 1st Airborne Division, as part of Operation Market Garden, where they suffered extremely heavy casualties and never saw combat again for the rest of the war.

The battalion was involved in the Ballymurphy Massacre in August 1971, when 11 Catholic civilians were shot dead and many wounded over a two-day period.

[5][6] A week later, under Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, on 30 January 1972, the battalion carried out the Bloody Sunday killings, when they opened fire on unarmed protesters in Derry, leaving 14 Catholic civilians dead and 13 wounded; the greatest killing of British subjects by government forces in one incident since the Irish War of Independence.

The battalion was involved in another controversial shooting incident on 7 September 1972, when soldiers shot dead two Protestant civilians and wounded others in the Shankill area of Belfast.

A unit of the Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) refused to carry out duties until the battalion was withdrawn from the Shankill.