How Britain Kept Calm and Carried On (19 page)

David Smith, Lincoln

In 1945, Mrs K. Pearson of Southfield Avenue, Paignton, was expecting a parcel from her son, who was serving in the RAF. It contained his dirty laundry. A fortnight went by and still the parcel
was not delivered. Then she received another letter from her son: ‘Since I last wrote, my parcel has turned up, all nicely washed and ironed, with no word inside to show who had sent
it.’

Letter to the Sunday Express, February 1945

I
s that wonderful BBC television series
Dad’s Army
in any way an accurate portrayal of Britain’s Home Guard during the Second
World War? After all, we would hardly think that another series,
’Allo ’Allo
, in any way reflects the French Resistance during those harrowing years. Yet one has the feeling
that some of the goings-on in the Walmington-on-Sea platoon are not so far removed from reality.

It was on 14 May 1940 that an announcement was broadcast asking for volunteers for the Local Defence Volunteer Force. In August, the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, ordered the name to be
changed to the Home Guard. What would become a legend in British history was born.

The original idea was that this citizens’ army would try to delay invading German forces until the regular army could be rushed to the scene. But they were poorly armed and, as brave as
they might have been, it is difficult to imagine them holding back a highly trained, well-armed force, using only a collection of sporting and museum-piece firearms and bread knives tied to broom
handles. Eventually, better arms and better training transformed the original ragtag army into an organization that may well have proved an inconvenience to German paratroopers. But still . . .

The forming of the Home Guard was a response to what was already happening. As the threat of invasion became very real, up and down the country there were reports of bands of civilians arming
themselves with shotguns, air rifles and pitchforks, ready to stick it to the Hun. The government had two options: to quash these grass-roots resistance fighters; or to harness them into an
official organization. Thus, the Local Defence Volunteers were formed without any budget or any staff. And from there, as the Home Guard, it developed into something resembling a military
force.

The early signs were encouraging, at least from the point of view of numbers if not of efficiency. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had told those interested to register their names at their
local police station and they would be contacted when required. Inside the first twenty-four hours, more than a quarter of a million men had left their details, more than had been in
Britain’s regular peacetime army.

The government anticipated that around 150,000 men might answer the call to part-time arms. By the end of the second month, over one million had applied to join the LDV (‘Look, Duck and
Vanish’, as it was unkindly dubbed in some quarters). By the time the Home Guard was stood down in December 1944 – the threat of invasion having long since passed – its number
still stood at one million, and it had never dipped below that. A year later, on 31 December 1945, the organization was disbanded. But its name was indelibly printed on the history of the Second
World War.

Nevertheless, the relationship between the Home Guard and the War Office was generally an uneasy one. Lieutenant General Sir Henry Royds Pownall, the first Inspector General of the Local Defence
Volunteer Force, complained: ‘They are a troublesome and querulous lot . . . there is mighty little pleasing them, and the minority is always noisy.’ (In the interests of balance, it
should be noted that historian Brian D. Osborne, in his account of the Home Guard in Scotland, wrote that although Lieutenant General Pownall – who was Chief of General Staff for the British
Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium until the fall of France in May 1940 – might have appeared ‘a high-quality appointment’, in fact, Field Marshal Montgomery thought him
‘completely useless’.) All of which adds to our picture of how the Home Guard was viewed in some quarters.

My father-in-law joined the Home Guard in 1940. He was twenty-six years old and, as an engineer at the Rolls-Royce aero-engine factory, held a reserved occupation that prevented
him from joining up – or saved him from that fate, whichever way one wants to look at it. Talking to him long after the war, I formed the opinion that the Home Guard platoon of which he was a
member bore some resemblance to Captain Mainwaring’s outfit. There seemed to be plenty of larks and zero danger. His recollection was that it was something akin to grown-up Boy Scouts. That
is not to demean members of the Home Guard. If the Nazis had invaded the British mainland, even if their effectiveness would have been minimal, who is to say that the real Dad’s Army
wouldn’t have fought bravely? In the meantime, they kept calm and carried on.

I was a supervisor at Luton Airport and joined the Home Guard. After being supplied with ill-fitting uniforms we
had our first parade where the order was given that greatcoats must be worn. Unfortunately, I’d left mine in the car, so I rushed out to get it, put it on and then discovered that all the
buttons had been cut off. My son had been swapping army buttons at school. Further along in the line, a colleague had buckled his belt inside out. The captain asked: ‘Do you need to wear
glasses?’ But the worst of his scorn was reserved for the man next to me, who’d somehow managed to put on his greatcoat over his pack. The captain said: ‘You should have been in
the Camel Corps.’

When we had rifle practice, one man was firing away like mad at the target that was 200 yards away on a wall as big as a house. But not a mark was to be seen on the target. When the captain
pointed this out, the man replied: ‘Well, they’re leaving here OK.’

Tom King, Flitwick, Bedfordshire

My husband was assigned to a Home Guard AA unit. It meant him rushing home from work and dashing to catch a train to the site. On the platform he came face-to-face with his CO
and duly saluted smartly, only to be told that it was customary to salute an officer with the hat on the other way around.

Another incident that stays in my memory was the night my husband couldn’t stop chuckling after he came off duty. It seems the squad were practising loading the anti-aircraft guns, and the
ammunition was being passed from one man to another, and then to the man feeding the gun. The man in the middle of this operation had to walk several paces to hand over the ammunition. He took the
ammo, walked a couple of paces, put it down carefully on the ground and fished in his pocket for his handkerchief, then blew his nose. The resulting bellow from the sergeant needs no
description.

Zoe Paton, Southampton

This Home Guard private used to wear a wig under his cloth cap, but for night duty he was ordered to wear a metal helmet. Obviously it was nowhere near as comfortable as his
cap, so at the first opportunity he discarded it. Someone found it and returned it to HQ. When he was asked how he’d lost it, he replied: ‘It blew away in the wind, sir.’

An NCO who had a rather timid voice was drilling a company of Home Guard on the clifftop. When being marched towards a precipice, one of the front rank was heard to say: ‘I wish he would
say something – if only “Goodbye”.’

A young Home Guard member was on the rifle range. Having overcome his fear of the weapon, he proceeded to place two hits on his own target and three on his neighbour’s. Everyone fell about
laughing when he received two reprimands – one for wasting ammunition, the other for spoiling someone else’s target.

John Harvey, Launceston, Cornwall

I was working at A. V. Roe’s Chadderton when I joined the Home Guard. About forty of us were on parade in a single line, with rifles and one round of live ammunition each,
in an enclosed paddock by the side of the mill. At the far end of the line, the CO, a regular officer from a southern regiment, stood on a three-feet-high dais. All the lads on parade knew at least
something about the firearm. I’d been on night work and, although I didn’t know it, I’d missed quite an important part of the drill. The CO bawled the order to load. I
hadn’t a clue. I watched what was happening and followed suit, so I thought.