Twenty-eight years later the Home Guard would be immortalized (and ridiculed) by the BBC television series Dad’s Army, which became one of the nation’s favourite programmes. At the outset in 1940 much about the organization was ridiculous, not least its weapons, which included wooden rifles, pitchforks, pick-handles, ancient revolvers, swords, daggers, stilettos, clasp knives and coshes made from garden hosepipe filled with lead. The force’s initial low rating derived partly from a remark by Churchill, who told the War Office that ‘every man must have a weapon of some kind, be it only a mace or a pike’. Taking him at his word, the War Office ordered 250,000 metal poles with surplus rifle bayonets welded to the ends – a move much resented by the volunteers, as it made them sound idiotic, and no more use than bystanders in the production of a Shakespeare comedy.
Other objects of mockery were their ill-fitting denim overalls, which had a revolting smell when new. When squads started marching about on their evening parades, little boys would run after them, derisively calling out the sizes from the tickets on their backs and trousers, and comparing them unfavourably with the physique of the wearers.
A good deal about the nature of the organization is revealed in The British Home Guard Pocket-Book, a small volume which first appeared in October 1940. Its author, Brigadier General Arthur Frank Umfreville Green, had fought in the Boer War and First World War. In 1940 he was sixty-one, and his rank and seniority made him an obvious choice for the commander of some Home Guard unit; but he preferred to let junior officers exercise control, while he went round teaching his own special subject, musketry. He was also something of a writer, with two published novels to his credit, and clearly had a robust sense of humour. His pocket-book, though primarily an instruction manual, was so engaging that it sold 22,000 copies in its first year and was reprinted five times before going into a second edition in 1942.
The text – 150 pages of detailed advice on leadership, training, weapons, battle drill, reconnaissance, patrolling, digging trenches, creating obstacles, handling explosives and many other topics – was both outspoken and intensely practical, and his first chapter set the tone:
As I see it, our only excuse for existence is to look out for Germans and to help the military to kill them, or – better still – kill themselves.
Discipline does not consist merely in smartness on parade – it consists in all working as a team and obeying a permanent or temporary Leader promptly, vigorously and intelligently …
Duds, Dead-Weight and Passengers – are they of any use to H.G.? What are we to do with malcontents and subversive individuals and inefficient men? The answer is easy. As Mr Middleton [the radio gardener] teaches us to prune roses, so can we prune our duds. ‘Ruthlessly’ is the operative word. We are at war, and there is no time to spare. If you see dead wood or anything unhealthy – cut it out.
Rank. Are we to salute or not? Whom shall we salute? If, for example, a tradesman with no military prestige … has in his unit an Admiral and a couple of Generals, the question they ask is ‘Who salutes whom?’ My answer is clear. If I am a Volunteer in a section or a patrol commanded by a General or a Blacksmith or my own Gardener, I do what he orders to the best of my ability. And on parade I salute him.
Stirred up by General Green and others, many countrymen handed in their shotguns for use by the Home Guard, and these were tested by experts for their ability to fire single-ball ammunition. Later the volunteers were properly armed with British .303 rifles and American P17 .300 Springfields, and they quickly became less of a joke then than now. Captain Mainwaring and his ramshackle crew provoked great hilarity in the television audiences of another generation, but it is easy to forget that 1600 members of the Home Guard were killed on duty during the war.
Many absurd incidents did take place. One moonlit night there was a call-out in Shropshire, when somebody claimed to have seen a parachute descending. Norman Sharpe, gamekeeper on the Apley Hall estate, remembered how he and his fellow volunteers rapidly took up prearranged positions:
The night wore slowly on, with everyone becoming increasingly bored and tired. Suddenly a shot rang out! Action at last! Everyone was electrified. Complete with escort, the Company Commander strode away in the direction of the shot.
A sentry had been posted along a narrow lane, and he was asked, ‘Did you fire that shot?’
‘Yes Sir.’
‘What at?’
‘A rabbit, Sir.’
‘You absolute so-and-so.’
‘Yes Sir. But I did as you instructed. I said halt but he came on. I said halt again and he took a few more hops forward. I challenged a third time and still he came on, so I shot him.’
Much of the recruits’ time was spent training. Nineteen-year-old Charles Bond, at forestry school in the Forest of Dean, beyond the Severn in Gloucestershire, was actively involved, and many an entry in his diary recorded Home Guard activities: ‘HG exercise in morning … HG parade … rifle range drill, distance judging … HG lecture on Sten gun, practice at moving in extended order through woods … Posting night sentries.’ But a questionnaire issued by headquarters in Inverness to all Zone Commanders, Group Commanders and Battalion Commanders, and kept under lock and key, suggests that in March 1941 instruction was still at an early stage: ‘How do you distinguish between enemy and friendly (a) parachutists (b) troop carriers? … Do you and your men understand map references? Have you a map? … Have you fired your rifle? If so, what result?’
The amateur soldiers studied maps, gave orders to the platoon in drill halls and went on exercises at weekends, often in pairs, guarding railway lines and bridges, and defending beaches against practice attacks by units of the regular army. Indoors, they stripped their rifles with the lights on and reassembled them in the dark. For live firing on the ranges, they were supervised by regular soldiers. At first ammunition was so scarce that men were allowed to fire only five rounds a day. All the same, target practice took place not just on designated ranges but also in old quarries and chalkpits, where any vertical wall or cliff-face served as a stop-butt and minimized the chance of casualties among the local population.
For country boys on the loose, such places were a delight, for they yielded treasures such as empty cartridge cases, fragments of grenades and even the occasional live round. Spent .22 bullets were highly prized, even if crumpled up by impact on metal or stone, for they could be melted down, fashioned into arrow-heads and fitted to home-made shafts of hazel or willow. Better trophies still were intact heavy-calibre machine-gun bullets found dumped, presumably because they had failed to fire; and thunderflashes, which simulated grenade explosions. Sometimes these big, thick fireworks were accidentally dropped during night exercises and could be found lying about in the morning – but they needed careful handling, for a premature detonation could easily blow off fingers. Even bits of bomb casing were much valued.
Ian Hacon and Peter Lucas, two boys who lived near Ipswich, were much given to riding around the countryside on their bikes. When they discovered an ammunition dump which was guarded during the day but not at night, they several times climbed over the barbed wire and helped themselves to cartridges, which they sold to school friends for 2d each. Schools, of course, made it illegal to collect such desirable souvenirs, and boys found secreting them were punished, usually with the cane; nevertheless, collectors keenly swapped and traded items, not least the silver paper dropped by enemy aircraft to confuse radar.
In the words of the historian Geoffrey Cousins, ‘Although defence was the stated object of the exercise, every man who answered the appeal [to join the Home Guard] was captivated by the idea of being