In July 1940 Winston Churchill coined the name for a new citizen army which in a few short weeks could muster a million men under arms. The Home Guard's weapons may have been crude but they stood ready to repel an invasion which never came. Norman Longmate explores the reality behind the myths of ΓÇÿDad's Army'.
QUEUES WERE a familiar feature of wartime life, but those that formed outside police stations on the evening of Tuesday, 14 May 1940 were unique. ΓÇÿApplicants seemed to form a never-ending stream', recalled one man who had helped man a temporary office in the police station yard at Perry Bar, Birmingham. ΓÇÿThey started to queue up as soon as they could leave their work and by 11pm there were still scores of them waiting to enrol.'
What had unleashed the flood was a broadcast earlier that evening by the Secretary of State for War, Sir Anthony Eden, calling on ΓÇÿmen between the ages of 17 and 65' to join the Local
Defence Volunteers (LDV).
Within six weeks nearly one and a half million men had signed on, and the new force - renamed the Home Guard by Churchill in late July - was already rivalling the army itself in size. In fact, while the regular army dated back only to 1661, reliance on a part-time militia for local home defence was a concept dating back to Anglo-Saxon times. The citizenry had provided the bulk of the country's defenders against the Spanish Armada and had manned the coast against Napoleon, and the Volunteers of late Victorian times had inspired Tennyson's poem ΓÇÿRiflemen form!' Veterans of the First World War formed the backbone of most units, but at least one company commander in the 1st Caernarvonshire Battalion had actually served in the Volunteers 50 years before.
Eden had referred in his broadcast to ΓÇÿthe dropping of parachute troops behind the main defensive lines' as a feature of the German advance in Holland and Belgium, and one of the infant LDV's main tasks was to keep watch for the anticipated clouds of airborne invaders. Another was watching for members of the ΓÇÿfifth column', native-born traitors or disguised intruders who were alleged to have eased the Germans' advance through France by sabotage and deception. This was more interesting than trying to carry out arms drill without weapons and justified the stopping of neighbours for identity card inspections at temporary roadblocks.
Friction between the new force and other civilians soon developed. Men eagerly trying to learn how to defend their country found themselves accused by municipal park-keepers of infringing bye-laws, or driven out of private squares where they were trying to drill. The police were unhappy about such guns as the Home Guard possessed finding their way into untrained hands. And the ARP, after long waiting and preparation, resented the self-importance of these belated patriots. All of which helps to explain why the Home Guard is remembered now as more comic than heroic.
Armbands and elephant guns
A chronic lack of proper uniforms did nothing to counteract the comic image. The LDV was just being formed when the British Expeditionary Force returned from France without much of its weapons and equipment, and inevitably was low on the list of priorities for either. At first the only evidence that Home Guards were members of the armed forces, rather than spies or resistance fighters who could be shot out of hand, was no more than an LDV armband. The denims that followed usually fitted poorly, and did nothing to create a soldierly appearance.
Weapons were in equally short supply. In theory there were enough rifles for about one man in three, but these were concentrated in the most vulnerable areas and many units had none at all. Instead, they had to rely on shotguns, ornamental duelling pistols and anything else they could get their hands on. Ancient Lee-Enfields used as props for patriotic tableaux in Drury Lane, vintage Snyder rifles from the Belle Vue Zoo in Manchester, a First World War grenade from Newbury Borough Museum: anything was better than nothing. A Cornish Home Guard remembers a colleague turning out with an ungainly elephant gun that should certainly have been capable of stopping a German paratrooper. The pride of the armoury of one Essex unit was an Arab sword, five feet long, intended to be used from a camel's back.
The Molotov Cocktail was the recommended defence against tanks, and many thousands were manufactured that summer. A former captain in the Kent Home Guard remembers going round the village on Sunday morning ΓÇÿcollecting empty whisky and soft drinks bottles (ΓÇÿbeer bottles being too hard for easy breakage'). These were filled with ΓÇÿa mixture of tar and petrol or paraffin...with the aid of a twig fire for boiling the tar...to make it mix well.'
Such devices were hazardous enough to make, let alone use, and justified the cynical description of a Home Guard weapon as ΓÇÿone that was dangerous to the enemy, and, to a greater extent, to the operator'. Meanwhile, the Home Guard ladies, unable to serve in the ranks, rallied round by making canvas carriers for six Molotovs each from old mattress covers.
Legend has also equipped the early Home Guard platoons with pikes - lengths of iron tubing tipped by bayonet-like blades. Pikes were indeed issued, but not until September 1941, when the threat of invasion had passed and the majority of Home Guards were substantially better equipped. The pikes were something of an embarrassment.
Despite the comedy, there was a serious side to the LDV's activities. Perhaps their most important contribution was to take over the defence of Britain's coastline, factories, public utilities, airfields and thousands of other vulnerable points in the summer of 1940. In the process they released thousands of regular troops for desperately needed training and relieved the Army of a strain - otherwise intolerable.
By November 1940 the period of makeshift, terrifying but exhilarating was over. Those men not prepared to train and drill seriously dropped out or were encouraged to leave. Along with adequate uniforms and weapons, the Home Guard acquired military ranks and something close to military discipline and bureaucracy.
In November 1942 the ΓÇÿhousemaid's clause' under which any volunteer could resign at a fortnight's notice was dropped. Conscription of men aged 18-51 was introduced to keep units up to strength, and fines were imposed for non-attendance at parades.
By March 1943, when the force reached its peak strength of nearly 1,800,000, its role had changed too. In the increasingly unlikely event of the Germans mounting an invasion to disrupt the preparations for D-Day, Home Guard members would be expected to fight alongside the regulars in large formations. It still had no tanks, but it did have its own artillery in the form of the ingenious Smith Gun, light enough to be towed into action by a ΓÇÿbaby' Austin, the lightest car on the road. Some Home Guards were manning anti-aircraft guns and rocket-firing ΓÇÿZ' batteries to allow the regular crews a night off.
Finally, on Sunday 3 December 1944, they were stood down. ΓÇÿI am very proud of what the Home Guard has done,' said King George VI in a broadcast that night. ΓÇÿI know that your country will not forget that service.'
Taken from John Keegan's History of the Second World War, Part One: The Blitzkrieg Storm Breaks, published with The Daily Telegraph, August 29, 1989.
