CHAPTER 5
The idea of a ‘Home Guard’ – an armed volunteer militia ready to rush to its country’s defence when it was in danger – is not a twentieth-century innovation. There are numerous examples from history where civilians have been encouraged to lend a hand in the military defence of their homeland.
In the face of what they considered a threatening British military build-up in October 1774 the rebellious Massachusetts Provincial Congress urgently called for volunteers to supplement their militia resources. They suggested the establishment of ‘companies of minute-men, who should be equipped and prepared to march at the shortest notice’. These minute-men comprised a quarter of the whole militia and, led by field officers, they were divided into companies of about fifty men each.
More famous for his saucy seaside postcards, Donald McGill actually began his career as a naval draughtsman, only moving into the field with which he is most associated in 1904. During the First World War McGill drew anti-German propaganda postcards. ‘The Thin Red Line’ dates from 1940 and characterises the Home Guard in true Dad’s Army guise. The artist continued working until 1962.
France, an ally of the rebellious patriots, had a hand in Britain’s defeat in North America. At the turn of the eighteenth century France was again at odds with the British government and now, led by Napoleon, and had decided to invade Britain. As a result of this threat, in July 1803 the government decided to raise a guerrilla force that might resist occupying forces by operating in small bodies to harass, instil panic and wear out the French Army. In July 1803 in his amendment to the Defence of the Realm Act, Secretary at War Charles Yorke wrote:
In these times, it is better to run the hazard even of the people making a bad use of their arms, than that they should be actually left in a state of entire ignorance of the use of them. For my own part, I can safely aver, that I cannot see any real danger which is likely to accrue to the internal peace of the Country, when I consider the present dispositions and feelings of the people.
Within a few weeks of the government’s appeal for help 280,000 men had volunteered to join the new militia.
In 1812, when it was Russia’s turn to be challenged with a Napoleonic invasion, Emperor Alexander I decreed the establishment of a People’s Volunteer Corps. Intended to augment the over-stretched regular troops and reinforce the huge open spaces of this vast county, the people’s volunteer corps saw landlords provide a percentage of their serfs aged between 17 and 45 in support of the nation’s struggle during the so-called ‘Patriotic War’. These units were an embodiment of national pride and a great inspiration to the Russian people.
The advent of the twentieth century saw a new warfare abroad. Though it had been seriously threatened with invasion a couple of times since 1066 – first by the Armada in 1588 and then by Napoleon during the period 1803–5, Britain’s geographical location as an island with no land borders with potential enemies made it somewhat impregnable. Fast ships with powerful, accurate long-range guns and, especially, aircraft changed all this. The White Cliffs and marshy estuaries were no longer a bulwark. The island’s moat could be easily eliminated.
However, although the Germans possessed a capable air force during the First World War and were pioneers of airships that were capable of carrying offensive payloads that were far heavier than even the largest biplane bombers could lift skywards, the Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte was incapable of carrying an invading army across the English Channel.
And, during the years 1914–18, parachutes were only really an apparatus of escape – and generally only allocated to the lonely occupants of tethered observation balloons – pilots went without. Germany did of course have a powerful navy which was up to the job of at least getting thousands of troops across the English Channel or the North Sea, but Britain had a far bigger one capable of smashing any such attempt.
It wasn’t until the Second World War that the aeroplane both threatened to deliver invading troops to Britain by parachute and also promised to act as an aerial umbrella, protecting any enemy naval or amphibious invasion force below by dropping bombs on any vessels sailing to intercept it. And it is, of course, in the Second World War when armed volunteers such as Britain’s Home Guard, ‘Dad’s Army’, really came to the fore.
Soldier, journalist, poet and Marxist politician, Tom Wintringham was all this and much more. He served as a mechanic and motorcyclist in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War and afterwards travelled to Moscow, returning to England in order to establish a British section of the Third International, having joined the recently formed Communist Party of Great Britain. During the Spanish Civil War he commanded the British Battalion of the International Brigades, befriending Ernest Hemingway along the way. Published in 1940, New Ways of War was a timely handbook of guerrilla warfare based on Wintringham’s experiences in the Iberian Peninsula.
Bert ‘Yank’ Levy’s story is as colourful as Tom Wintringham’s, under whose command he served during the Spanish Civil War. A Canadian by birth, he grew up fast in the United States where his family had moved and where his father had been seriously injured when Levy was young. He said his real education was ‘in the schools of hard knocks’, and after enlisting in the Merchant Navy he found himself in England. By 1940, along with many of his former colleagues from Spain, Levy was teaching what he had learned at the Home Guard’s Osterley Park training school. Published in 1941, Guerrilla Warfare was a graphic record of all Yank Levy’s skills.
That’s not to say that there weren’t equivalents to the Home Guard in the First World War. The Territorial and Reserve Forces Act of 1907 combined the old Volunteer Force with the Yeomanry, creating the Territorial Force (TF) which was also supplemented by a Special Reserve. Containing 14 infantry divisions and 14 mounted yeomanry brigades, the TF had a strength of nearly 270,000 men. The declaration of war in August 1914 saw an immediate demand to reinforce the home forces with men who were over military age or engaged in important occupations. Initially often quite haphazardly organised and known as ‘town guards’, bands of eager volunteers gave up their spare time in defence of the realm, but by November 1914 an official Volunteer Training Corps was established. By 1916 this organisation had morphed into the Volunteer Force, a direct equivalent of the Home Guard of the 1940s.
On 14 May 1940, the Minister of War, Anthony Eden, made a radio broadcast asking for volunteers fit enough to march and fire a shotgun or rifle to join his new volunteer force. Desperate times required desperate measures and in the face of a rapidly deteriorating military situation on the Continent (the hasty evacuation from Dunkirk would begin in twelve days’ time) Eden’s appeal was nothing if not earnest: ‘We want large numbers of men in Great Britain who are British subjects between the ages of 17 and 65 to come forward now and offer their service in order to make assurance doubly sure. The name of the new force which is now to be raised will be the Local Defence Volunteers.’
‘Make each lesson as interesting as you can, and you will gain the confidence of your Command, and they will feel they are of importance to the Battalion’, J.H. Levey countenanced in this spread from Home Guard Training.
For only 1s (5p) each volunteers could add one of publisher Bernards’ Key to Victory series to their pamphlets and handbooks and learn, especially, how to use imported North American weapons from manufacturers such as Springfield, Garand and Ross.
Police stations and local government offices were besieged by volunteers eager to get their names on a rapidly growing list. Eden had expected perhaps 150,000 volunteers but the first month saw 750,000 men either serving in reserved occupations or too young or too old for military service with the regulars. By the end of June, there were over 1 million volunteers.
Churchill, who had only taken over as Prime Minister on 10 May, never liked the acronym LDV, and thought it lacked offensive spirit. Watching the disparate bunch of volunteers march up and down village streets, often armed with little more than a broomstick, wags reckoned ‘LDV’ stood for ‘Look, Duck and Vanish’. Despite the fact that over 1 million brassards had been printed bearing the initials LDV and that despite mounting shortages many publishers had already printed handbooks for Local Defence Volunteers, some of them illustrated on these pages, on 22 July Churchill got his way and the organisation was officially renamed the Home Guard. New training manuals and 1 million replacement brassards had to be hastily produced.
Unarmed Combat. Your Answer to Invasion by James Hipkiss (June 1941). ‘Designed for the Home Guard and civilians’.
Factory Defence by Colonel G.A. Wade MC (1941). The previous year the author wrote The Defence of Bloodford Village which proposed a scenario that haunted Home Guard commanders throughout the war – German parachutists landing behind the lines and linking up with Fifth Columnists.
Japan’s entry into the war in December 1941 encouraged nations like Australia and North America, both long isolated from invasion risk by virtue of their geographical location, to consider the establishment of their own home defences. Developments in air power and the potential for high-speed amphibious assault meant that previously inviolate nations faced the risk of invasion. In the past one of the main duties of volunteer militias was to manage internal security and be on hand to put down insurrection – now their main role was as an armed supplement to regular forces and they had to be prepared to meet the invader in a combat situation.
Modelled on Britain’s Home Guard, Australia’s Volunteer Defence Corps (VDC) had been established in July 1940. Organised by the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL) it was initially composed of ex-servicemen who had served in the First World War, but the government took over control of it in May 1941. Due to Japanese aggression by February 1942 membership was extended to any men aged between 18 and 60 who were working in reserved occupations. As a result, Australia’s VDC reached a peak of almost 100,000 men spread right across the continent.
‘He’s coming south. It’s fight, work or perish’ read an Australian propaganda poster from 1942. It showed a Japanese soldier, rifle in hand with fixed bayonet, rushing towards across the globe towards Australia – all against a backdrop of an unfurled rising sun flag. This poster was criticised for being alarmist when it was first released – it was soon banned by the Queensland government.
With the Home Guard by Captain Simon Fine (1943) recounts the rapid development of Britain’s volunteer defence force from humble origins when everything was improvised to a well-trained and equipped fighting force.
Home Guard Training by Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Levey was allegedly a bit of a rush job and published in 1940 when the Home Guard had only existed for a matter of months. It included much more drill than those guerrillas of Yank Levy (no relation) and Tom Wintringham’s persuasion liked. A private in the Scots Guards in 1899, Levey went on to earn the DSO in 1917 and ended the war as Deputy Inspector General of Training to the British Armies in France and Britain.
But the threat was real, and elements of the Imperial Japanese forces had already drawn up plans for an attack on Australia. With the fall of Singapore in February 1942 the long-derided Japanese Army achieved a new status. Japan’s was an army to be feared and one that in fact might reach Australia after all and it wasn’t long before they did.
On 19 February, the bombing of Darwin took place. It was Australia’s Pearl Harbor. Although the targets for the 242 Japanese aircraft involved in the attack were military, Darwin’s harbour and the town’s 2 airfields, bombed to prevent the Allies from using them as a staging post in their attempt to re-conquer Timor and Java, inevitably there were civilian deaths among the 240 killed. An American destroyer, the USS Peary was in harbour at the time and it and 22 RAAF aircraft were destroyed. It was the worst wartime loss of life on Australian soil in the country’s history.
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor the Japanese tasked seven of their submarines to operate close to the United States’ west coast and ordered them to select targets of opportunity such as merchant men and even the American military if a suitable occasion arose.
On 23 February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s submarine I-17 fired its deck canon and shells soon rained down on the oil refinery at Ellwood near Santa Barbara. Although the shelling did only minor damages to a pier and an oil well derrick, it created ‘invasion fever’ all along the West Coast. The raid also influenced the decision to intern Japanese-Americans. It also marked the first shelling of the North American mainland during the conflict.
Fortunately, the United States was not without its own para-military defence force. The Militia Act of 1903 gave federal status to the militia and required the organised militia of the states to conform to Regular Army organisation and standards. It dramatically increased federal funding of the militia: between 1903 and 1916, the federal government spent $53 million on the Guard, more than the total of the previous hundred years. The act was instrumental in setting up what we now know as America’s National Guard with the creation of a separate section responsible for this new organisation’s affairs.
The National Defense Act of 1916 further transformed the militia from individual state forces into a Reserve Component of the US Army – and made the term ‘National Guard’ mandatory. It increased the number of annual training days to fifteen, increased the number of yearly drills to forty-eight and authorised pay for drills.
Because the US Army did not want to bear the financial burden of supporting troops whose only role was internal security, the Guard was disbanded following the end of the war in 1920.
However, although United States favoured isolationism and was neutral, the National Guard began mobilisation again on 16 September 1940. While the Guard originally focused on protecting local communities, it eventually grew into a force that complemented the full-time army and indeed many National Guard units would see action in both the Pacific and European theatres.
The United States Home Guard served as an option for those who wished to join the military but were unwilling or unable (due to political commitments) to deploy abroad as members of the National Guard were obliged to do. The United States Home Guard kept themselves at a high state of readiness in preparation for any threat to American soil, proving the perfect place for congressmen or other citizens who could not deploy to foreign nations, but still wanted proudly to support their country in times of need.
Although Germany was one of the main belligerents and had actually invaded numerous sovereign states early on in the Second World War, prompting the conflict to go global, as the tide of war turned against the Reich it needed its own home guard. The boot was now on the other foot.
Actually, even before Bismarck’s unification, when German-speaking Central Europe comprised more than 300 political entities, many independent German states possessed armed militias.
The Landwehr in Prussia was first formed in 1813, and all men capable of bearing arms between the ages of 18 and 45, and not serving in the Regular Army, were eligible for call-up for the defence of the country. After Waterloo and the removal of Napoleon as a threat, the part-time Landwehr became an integral element in the Prussian Army, but by 1859 such troops were relegated to the second line. The Austrian Landwehr was officially established by order of Emperor Franz Josef on 5 December 1868. But, being insufficiently supported by the Austro-Hungarian authorities however, by the 1880s the organisation had fallen into neglect and in 1887, Austrian Habsburg General Archduke Albert wrote that Landwehr units would not be ready to fight without two weeks’ notice. The Landwehr system of supplementary support for the regular forces was to remain in place until 1918.
‘The heaviest tank is on fire when you’ve the Panzer Faust at hand and even the heaviest armour isn’t much when you’re on target’. Development of Germany’s Panzerfaust (literally ‘tank fist’) began in 1942 and the resulting weapon, the Panzerfaust 30, was in production by 1943. Firing a shaped charge, this weapon is the predecessor of many of the rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) platforms in use today. Most famously used by old men of the Volkssturm and boys from the Hitler Youth against Soviet tanks during the last days of the Third Reich, this powerful hand-held weapon came with a bold warning printed in large red letters on the firing tube: ‘Achtung! Feuerstrahl! (‘Beware! Fire Jet!’). After firing, the tube was discarded, making the Panzerfaust the first disposable anti-tank weapon.
The best-known twentieth-century German self-defence force is, of course, the Second World War’s stirringly named Volkssturm, meaning people’s or national storm. This organisation became of increasing importance to Germany as the Reich began to crumble following the Soviet victory at Stalingrad in 1943 and the Allied landings in Normandy a year later.
Comprising all males aged 16–60, Volkssturm units fought principally on the Eastern Front, most notably in East Prussia, Breslau, along the Oder River and in Berlin. Germany’s regular Nineteenth Army positioned on the Upper Rhine became so reliant on Volkssturm troops for infantry that it was nicknamed the 19. Volkssturm-Armee. This also helped engender a feeling that volunteers were joining a real, professionally armed organisation, not a rabble militia, and that if they were subsequently captured they would be treated as soldiers and not shot out of hand as guerrillas or saboteurs. Indeed, one of their principal weapons was the Panzerfaust, ‘Tank Fist’, a lethal fire and forget weapon which despatched a shaped charge that was capable of immobilising any tank on the battle field. Volkssturm units would be issued with shipping crates each containing four weapons. With the letters Achtung! Feuerstrahl! (‘Attention! Fire Jet!) written in large red letters on the firing tube, warning soldiers to avoid the back blast, the Panzerfaust was the forerunner of today’s Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG). Capable of being fired by even the youngest members of the Volkssturm as well as boys in the Hitler Youth, this weapon was the bane of advancing Allied tank units. An example of the kind of hurriedly produced instruction leaflets issued to German fighters is shown in this book (see opposite).
I will look in more detail at the various pieces of written ephemera associated with volunteer defence forces which can still be collected by the enthusiast but, before I do, no survey of such organisations can be considered complete without mentioning Britain’s super-secret Home Guard, the legendary Auxiliary Units. As we shall see, they also had reference to printed documents, and one in particular, The Countryman’s Diary 1939, is now as rare as hen’s teeth.
Instructions on the Lewis Automatic Machine Gun. Though it was invented by an American, Colonel Isaac Newton Lewis, as far back as 1911, this reliable and accurate weapon remained in service until the end of the Korean War in the 1950s.
Popular history has planted the popular TV sitcom Dad’s Army into the national conscience as the cultural reference point for how many in Britain think about the nation’s hastily organised home defences in the wake of the collapse at Dunkirk in 1940. Then it appeared a given that the opportunist Hitler would capitalise on his successes on the Continent with an immediate invasion of Britain, the Third Reich’s last remaining obstacle in Europe. Although most of the BEF had returned safely from France, it had been forced to abandon most of its modern weapons and vehicles on the battlefield and had returned armed only with rifles. An urgent supplement was required to shore up Britain’s regular forces while they regrouped and reequipped. The Home Guard might, just might, provide a useful accessory. Certainly it was thought it might provide a useful, even expendable, front line in the face of a German invasion, impeding the Wehrmacht’s advance while regular forces could decide where and when to make a coordinated counter thrust.
Poorly armed and only barely trained, the Home Guard was, in its early days at least, the rather amateurish organisation portrayed in the classic BBC comedy series. There was, however, a far more serious and potentially valuable Home Guard, the super-secret Auxiliary Units.
The story of Auxiliary Units really began when Winston Churchill appointed Colonel Colin Gubbins to establish a special force answering to GHQ Home Forces, but organised as if it was part of the existing Home Guard.
A regular soldier, Gubbins had wide experience of unconventional warfare. He had encountered the irregular tactics of the Bolsheviks during Britain’s ill-judged and ill-fated intervention at Archangel during the Russian Civil war in 1919 and had confronted Michael Collin’s IRA during the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21. On both occasions he had been impressed by the capabilities of a small, well-organised unit when pitted against a much larger and better equipped foe. During the debacle of the Norwegian campaign which ultimately led to the collapse of Chamberlain’s government and the ascendency of Winston Churchill, Gubbins led the Independent Companies, forerunner of the British Commandos. In November 1949 Colin Gubbins was to be chosen as the military head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) but now his role was to provide Britain with a covert and very irregular defence force.
Gubbins had also authored a couple of important handbooks, The Art of Guerrilla Warfare Handbook and The Partisan Leader’s Handbook, both of which were full of hints and tips about the various nefarious techniques irregular forces would need to employ in order to overwhelm a larger and better equipped enemy.
Gubbins was not alone in his activities but was supported by excellent and, like him, somewhat maverick subordinates. One of them, Captain Peter Fleming of the Grenadier Guards, was the brother of James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming. Captain Mike Calvert of the Royal Engineers would later command the Bush Warfare School in Burma and fight in the jungles against the Japanese with Orde Wingate’s Chindits.
Gubbins, Fleming and Calvert were involved in the creation of so-called Operational Patrols, which consisted of between four and eight men, often farmers or landowners who knew the land (Auxiliary Units’ activities would take place under the cover of darkness) and usually recruited from men in the Home Guard who were looking for something a bit more challenging than endless drill and target practice with obsolete American P17 rifles of Great War vintage. Around 3,500 such men were distributed throughout Auxiliary Unit patrols located right across Britain. They were divided into the following battalions: 201 (Scotland), 202 (northern England) or 203 (southern England). Although they wore Home Guard uniforms, with unit flashes on their shoulders which linked them to the county in which they operated, they did not fall under Home Guard control and were not subject to the routine and discipline of those men who trained within this august organisation each week. Instead, Auxiliary Units went about familiarising themselves with every detail of their local environment and learned how to move about stealthily at night. They operated from underground hides, called Operational Bases (OBs), and should invasion actually happen were ordered to shut themselves up in their subterranean lairs and wait for a couple of weeks by when, surfacing under the cover of darkness, it was thought they would be well behind the enemy’s front and able to do most damage.
The Operational Patrols were supported by Special Duties and Signals Sections comprising about 4,000 members. These were the eyes and ears of Britain’s underground army, and were tasked with gathering intelligence – identify enemy units, high-ranking officers and the kinds of vehicles and heavy weapons employed by the invader.
Home Guard and inquisitive schoolboy alike consumed the dozens of specialist publications like these two in publisher Bernards’ Key to Victory series: Uniforms, Badges and Intelligence Data etc of the German Forces and Manual of Grenades.
Because Gubbins had seen how the IRA’s cell system prevented British forces from penetrating and compromising the rebel’s security, Auxiliary Units were established along similar lines. One Auxiliary Unit would not know about the existence, location and establishment of other units located nearby. If Auxiliers were captured they would know nothing. So secret was the organisation that volunteers didn’t even tell their families about their involvement. Having signed the Official Secrets Act, their silence was mandatory and many went to their graves without even their spouses knowing about the potentially very risky work with which they had been involved.
Although secrecy and security were paramount, even the Auxiliary Units possessed printed manuals and handbooks to instruct them about the techniques of guerrilla fighting.
In 1940, the year Auxiliary Units were first established, Auxiliers were issued with a small manual cunningly entitled Calendar 1937. This was followed by Calendar 1938, which was published in 1942. Finally, in 1943, when the Britain was bursting with American troops as well as thousands of soldiers from the dominions and invasion was, to say the least, unlikely, The Countryman’s Diary 1939 was produced.
Emblazoned with the words ‘Highworth Fertilisers do their stuff unseen, until you see results!’ (Highworth in Wiltshire was the location of Coleshill House, Auxiliary Units’ training HQ), this compact publication instructed readers on the use of phosphorous bombs, the application of wire garrottes against enemy sentries, the use of time pencils to detonate concealed bombs and blow up railway lines, fuel dumps and enemy stores and even how to blow the tail off a parked enemy aircraft with little more than a handful of plastic explosive.
Regular Home Guards would have been envious of the kind of equipment and written instructions with which Auxiliary Units were furnished. But even Dad’s Army was provided with a range of printed advice explaining their duties and the best way to go about them.
One of the earliest handbooks was Home Guards Training, published by Eyre and Spottiswoode in 1940 and available for a very reasonable 1s. It was authored by Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Levey, with a foreword by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Pownall.
A private in the Scots Guards in 1899, Levey went on to earn the DSO at St Julien in 1917 during the First World War, ending that conflict as a Lieutenant Colonel, when he served as the Deputy Inspector of Training under Inspector General of Training General Sir Ivor Maxse. Following his appointment as Chief of Staff to the BEF in France and Belgium, in May 1940 Lieutenant General Sir Henry Pownall was given the position of Inspector General for the recently created Home Guard.
The object of this book is to try and assist Commanders of Home Guard Units, and is in no way intended to replace official instructions or publications which have been issued or recommended. It is also hoped to assist all other ranks, many of whom have had previous military experience but may have forgotten, and have had no previous experience.
The preface began. It ended with this stirring exhortation:
The training of Home Guards in their duties in case of invasion must be the responsibility of the local Home Guard Commanders. Meanwhile the watchword for every member should be:- ‘Train yourself for your task to the utmost extent possible, in preparation for the important role you have to play in the scheme of National Defence.’
No punches were pulled on the pages of instruction within this useful pocket book.
Home Guards are expected to be good shots and to be certain of a ‘kill’ if an enemy gives the slightest chance at a reasonable distance … What are the lessons your men require in order to reach quickly the standard of being able to shoot at, say, 200 yards so as to Kill? … Men should be encouraged to practice daily loading and aiming for 5 minutes in their homes, if they keep their rifles at home.
In September 1940, Mr C.H. Newton, the Chief General Manager of the London & North Eastern Railway (LNER), issued instructions to his executives concerning ‘Facilities for the Home Guard’.
I have taken an opportunity of raising the question of responsibility for the expense of providing accommodation for home guards on railway property. Up to the present we have been doing our best to meet the position by allotting disused waiting rooms, huts, spare coaches, etc., but the reports which have reached me indicate that we are coming to the end of our resources in this respect and the question of building new structures, particularly at isolated places, will require to be considered … Whenever the matter is being discussed with the military authorities it should be made clear to them that the Company cannot accept this responsibility.
Signalling and Map-Reading for the Home Guard by H. G. Stokes, a Penguin Special published in 1941. It is now very hard to come by like many of the other Penguins from this period.
It seemed that the patriotic novelty of the Home Guard was not only wearing thin with the railways. After the initial rush to join the Local Defence Volunteers and subsequently the Home Guard in the summer of 1940, the RAF’s victory during the Battle of Britain and the advent of shorter and colder nights, nights made more dangerous because of the Blitz, saw a slowdown in recruits to civil defence. Recruiters had to be more persuasive than before to encourage those that weren’t eligible for service in the Regular Army to give up what little free time they had and join their own local defence force. ‘C’ Company of the 54th Kent Battalion Home Guard posted an entreaty headed ‘Recruits are Wanted’:
Why? Because so many men of this Company have been called up, or have joined H.M. Regular Forces. Because more men are needed to take their places and to defend, on a properly organised basis, your homes in Chislehurst District. The chances of attempted invasion have not diminished. We are giving up a great deal of our spare time preparing to smash Germans in Chislehurst. Are you going to leave it all to us? You’ll be no good if and when the time comes unless you are with us, or some other Official Defence Unit. Think it over!
Ironically, like it had with Auxiliary Units, as the likelihood of invasion diminished, the Home Guard received more and more printed advice on how to deal with it and a veritable plethora of privately produced anti-invasion leaflets and handbooks appeared, each intended to instruct those who had volunteered for home-defence duties, as well as those who were simply interested in it, how to go about resisting the invader.
London publisher Bernards was one of the most prolific supporters of civil defence. Their Key to Victory series of ultra-compact manuals were small enough to fit into the patch pockets of the new Battle Dress blouse. A particularly popular one promised full details on loading, firing, dealing with stoppages and stripping or assembling a range of weapons including automatic pistols, the ‘Boys’ anti-tank rifle and Northover Projector.
This guide didn’t only cover conventional weapons. It also included details about the more exotic munitions with which the Home Guard was gradually being equipped. The No. 76 SIP (Self-Igniting Phosphorous) grenade, for example, in a ‘Half pint clear glass bottle’ was described as having a range of between 20 and 30yd when thrown by hand and 75 and 100yd if fired from the Northover Projector. Readers were told this weapon was ‘immediately dangerous’ and that if it was used for incendiary purposes in blitzed houses, it should have ‘detonator and safety fuse attached to side of bottle to ensure breaking’. On the assumption, presumably, that an invasion had actually taken place and Home Guards might manage to wrest firearms from German soldiers, the guide also provided details about Luger and Mauser automatic pistols. About the Luger, Bernards’ guide said, ‘This is probably one of the most common of the German automatic pistols that may come into our hands and uses 9mm Parabellum ammunition only.’ The comprehensive ‘Manual of Small Arms & Special weapons’ was available for a very reasonable 1s and could be picked up at newsagents and branches of W.H. Smith.
Although all of the privately published handbooks and guides were sincere in their intent and full of information compiled by mostly reliable sources – usually retired army officers, these unrestricted publications were not the most up-to-date resources. The most accurate contemporary data was contained in the various official Military Training Pamphlets, Army Council Instructions (ACIs) and published Army Orders (the latter often comprise multiple volumes combined in a bound pocket book), all of which were marked either ‘Restricted’ or ‘Not to be Published’, bearing the warning, ‘The information given in this document is not to be communicated, either directly or indirectly, to the Press or to any person not holding an official position in His Majesty’s Service.’
Any idea of just how much official information was distributed to not just the regular forces but volunteers in the Home Guard as well can be gleaned from simply looking at two ACIs, both published in 1942, which updated previous ACI information circulated in 1940.
Firstly, ACI Nos 152–4, which were revisions of orders originally published during the ‘Invasion Summer’ of 1940 and which had already been updated in 1941, looked at a range of issues pertinent to the growing volunteer army. The majority of this double-sided, single-sheet document was dedicated to issues concerning administrative details such as information for students attending the War Office Schools for Training Instructors in the Home Guard, but the smaller articles, 153 and 154, were far more illuminating.
Article 153 stipulated the criteria surrounding the award of Home Guard proficiency badges, adding details relating to the award of badges to volunteers who had achieved proficiency in signalling or had passed the HG’s First Aid test. Article 154, on the other hand, was issued by the Quarter-Master-General and addressed the matter of ‘American Small Arms and Machine Guns’, which were now arriving in abundance to help fill the HG’s previously depleted armouries.
In order to assist in the identification of those American small arms and machine guns which have components common with British weapons, booklets are being produced which will give pictorial representations of weapons and parts, and the designation of both British and American components. Part numbers will be shown against the pictures and the designation … The booklet for ‘Guns, Machine, Vickers .30-inch, U.S.A., Mark I’ is now ready for distribution and units in possession of these guns (Including the Home Guard) should submit indents on the basis of one booklet for each gun held to the C.O.O., Weedon (Commanding Officer Ordnance at Weedon, the former Napoleonic War era Military Ordnance Depot, in Northamptonshire) through to the A.D.O.S. (Assistant Director Ordnance Services), by whom they are administered for ordnance services. As and when booklets for other weapons become available, the fact will be notified in A.C.I.s.
Just how frequent these subsequent ACIs appeared can be gauged from the fact that also in 1942, the same year as numbers 152–4 were distributed, No. 780 appeared. Furthermore, this publication was four pages in extent rather than simply a single sheet.
Army Council Instruction No. 780 dealt entirely with matters medical. Perhaps Home Guard volunteers who had been injured while engaged on training exercises had been utilising emergency and medical services provided for the regular troops and tying up staff and equipment reserved for front-line soldiers because Article 1, entitled Casualty Evacuation Scheme, stipulated: ‘In order to economise in medical and nursing personnel and equipment, Civil Defence casualty organisations will be made use of wherever possible. Only where Home Guard units are fighting near Regular Army troops will it be possible for Army Medical facilities to be available for Home Guard casualties.’
Article 3, Medical Orderlies and Stretcher-bearers, is equally fascinating: ‘The fact that a man may receive training as a stretcher-bearer will not affect his liability to be trained in the use of weapons. If called upon to use weapons, be must not wear his ‘S.B.’ brassard.’
With the tide of war at last turning in the Allies’ favour, Home Guard Circular No. 33, published by the War Office in August 1943, deals with issues regarding areas of complacency that had crept into an organisation which was now fully equipped but, in all honesty, unlikely ever to have to put its skills and training to use – certainly in the face of an invader.
From the following paragraph one can deduce that volunteers weren’t perhaps, treating their equipment with the respect demanded of the authorities who had issued it:
Equipment – authorised types of cleaners.
The following details on the subject of the correct type of cleaner for use on web equipment, web anklets and respirator haversacks are published for the guidance of unit commanders.
The only cleaner to be used will be that approved by the War Office, and is known as ‘Equipment Cleaner, Khaki Green, No. 3 (W.O. specification).’
The approved cleaner is made up of two types:
Powder – for use on web equipment, web anklets and respirator haversacks.
Block – for use on web equipment and web anklets only.
Item ‘G’ in this endless list of dos and don’ts about equipment maintenance provides some idea about the minutiae of details on which Home Guard commanders had to keep a weather eye: ‘Unit Commanders will prohibit the use of cleaners obtained from other sources of supply, as well as other unauthorised practices, such as scrubbing web equipment, using bleach powder or other colouring mediums, painting with service colour paints or camouflage emulsion, etc.’
And one can’t help but think of Dad’s Army’s elderly Private Godfrey when reading the following paragraph:
It is the responsibility of all Home Guard Commanders to ensure that all men in their units are employed in the way most suited to their physical standard. In most cases this is being done and older men are not employed for the more strenuous tasks which the unit has to perform. There is still evidence, however, to show that men of low medical standard or advanced years are being asked to carry out duties which are beyond their powers and from a sense of duty or patriotism, or from mistaken pride, they do not disclose that they are being overstrained.
The above is not in any way intended to belittle this fine organisation of patriots who gave freely of their spare time and in the summer of 1940 faced the potential of coming face to face with a hardened enemy which by then had a succession of victorious campaigns under its belt. And, even by the spring of 1944, just weeks before D-Day and the Allied invasion of Hitler’s Festung Europa the Home Guard was still manning the barricades with more than 100,000 men operating anti-aircraft batteries alone.
On 14 May 1944, precisely four years after the Home Guard was formed, King George, who was their Colonel-in-Chief, wrote to volunteers to thank them for their efforts.
The burden of training and duty, dependant as it is on the needs of war, cannot fail to fall with greater weight on some than on others. To that great number of you who combine proficiency and enthusiasm in Home Guard work with responsible work of National importance in civil life, I would send a special message of thanks and encouragement.
After D-Day and the Allied advance into occupied Europe, the Home Guard was formally stood down on 3 December 1944. It was finally, officially disbanded on 31 December 1945. Male members were rewarded with a certificate, bearing a further message from the King: ‘In the years when our Country was in mortal danger, [name] who served [dates] gave generously of his time and powers to make himself ready for her defence by force of arms and with his life if need be. George R.I.’