[3][4][5] Under the Childers system, one regular battalion of each regiment was to be at a "home" station, while the other was abroad.

The 2nd Battalion arrived in South Africa in the following month, where it took part in minor actions on the western border of the Cape Colony.

The militia was renamed the "Special Reserve", with the duty of providing trained recruits in time of war.

The volunteer battalions became part of the new Territorial Force, which was organised into 14 infantry divisions which were called upon to serve abroad.

[15] The 2nd Battalion, DCLI was serving in 10th Infantry Brigade, which also included the 2nd Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment and 1st Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment, part of the 4th Infantry Division, and was sent overseas to France shortly after the outbreak of war, where they arrived on 1 October 1939 as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF).

Between 1946 and 1954, the 1st Battalion served in Palestine, Cyprus, Somaliland, England, and the Federal Republic of Germany.

[18] A Company detached on transit, posted to Prospect Camp, in the Atlantic archipelago of Bermuda.

[20] In 1957, A and E companies reunited with the rest of the battalion in England, before being posted to Osnabrück in Germany, where it remained until 1959.

Finally when the Strategic Defence Review came the D (Cornwall Light Infantry) Company was re-formed as part of the new Rifle Volunteers.

[30] The regimental war memorial was erected here in 1924; it was the work of Leonard Stanford Merrifield and was in the form of a statue on pedestal and steps made from bronze and granite; it has been listed Grade II*.

[31] Surfing Tommies is a 2009 play by the Cornish author Alan M. Kent which follows the lives of three members of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry on a journey from the mines of Cornwall to the fields of Flanders, where they learned to surf with South African troops.