The early stages of the Great War saw hundreds of volunteers return to England by ship to enlist in KEH and 2KEH as the call went out for Colonial volunteers with prior military service. Many of these men had seen service in the Boer War and those from South Africa in the campaign in German West Africa.
British and Ceylonese tea planters and merchants returned from Ceylon on the steamer
SS Derbyshire with the first contingent named the "Milward Contingent" after Captain Philip Henry Milward, a British Officer and engineering manager of a tea plantation who was KIA on 7th Dec 1915 with the 7th Battalion, Rifle Brigade who returned to England in Dec 1914 with 80 volunteers. Several other Contingents followed from Ceylon. There are seventeen volunteers from Ceylon named in the Nominal Roll section of this website as having returned to England to enlist.
Similarly, there were several Contingents from South America, the British West Indies and Shanghai. who returned to England to enlist. The "Shanghai Contingent" sailed from Yokohama on the
SS Suwa Maru under the command of Captain Alan Hilton-Johnson arriving in England on the 14 Dec 1914. Many of the volunteers were former soldiers and marines and they received rudimentary military training enroute. The South American Contingents was made up of a considerable number of British members of the Anglo-American Railway staff.
Many individual volunteers returned to England from Canada, Australia, South Africa and as far away as the Falkland Islands to enlist in KEH and 2KEH. The pages of the Nominal Roll of KEH and 2KEH detail the countries where many of the volunteers travelled from to enlist. The patriotic spirit that had drawn the volunteers from the Colonies to enlist stayed with them and many of the former members of the KEH and 2KEH held annual reunions when they returned home.
The King Edward's Horse were embodied 4th August 1914 in Chelsea where they were training with the 4th Cavalry Brigade. They were mobilised to Watford and moved to Bishop Storford in March 1915.
Figure 16: No. 3 Troop of ‘C’ Squadron at Gammons Farm, Watford in 1914 the captioning ‘enroute for Berlin’ by the Troopers capturing the optimism and excitement of the early stages of the Great War (The King Edward’s Horse Senior and Junior Comrades’ Association Annual Bulletin. 19: 16, 1952).
Figures 17 and 18: Front and rear of a postcard depicting a group of King Edward's Horse at Garston, Watford on 14 December 1914. The sender of the card is Private John Callum Newlans Eastick and he wrote on the back of the card that he wasn't actually in the postcard as these were Troopers of 'C' Squadron who had among their ranks many former members of the original Cambridge and Oxford university troops of the King Edward's Horse. He also notes that all leave had been cancelled and he thinks it unlikely that he will be home for Christmas. 
