It was with the South Northumberland Fusiliers that he travelled to France. His battalion arrived in France at the end of March 1915. Burden fought on the front line for ten months. His battalion fought at the bitterly contested Battle of Hooge in November 1914, in which both the British and German armies had suffered high losses. It is uncertain whether Burden took part. At his later court-martial, it was implied by senior officers that he had not, and that, indeed, that the only action he had seen was "the usual trench sniping" and a couple of patrols only.
