Local Defence Volunteers (Home Guard)

[Murphy]

This may be a bit of a ling shot but can anyone help me out with information resources on these units, uniforms, equipment and organisation. I'm also trying to find information on re-enactment groups.

Many Thanks

 

[Fury964]

Hi Murphy

I can't offer any help on Home Front info, but what types of reenactment groups are you looking at, Army, Navy, RAF or is your search for reenactment groups again specific to Home Front?

 

[Smithy]

Not my area of speciality but I have seen the training manual they used and which I think is still currently printed and is a fascinating read.

Being in the UK there'll definitely be quite a few reenactment groups doing LDV/Home Guard. One little thing you might like to consider portraying down the line if you go the reenactment course, and which would be a nice little point of difference, is the NZ Home Guard, very similar to their Mother Country counterparts but I don't think I've ever seen them reenacted.

Best,

Tim

 

[Shangas]

The Home Guard isn't my strong-point, but there certainly are reenactment groups. Not to be rude, but in all honesty, the Home Guard was a bit of a joke.

Ever seen the TV series "Dad's Army"?

That was more a resemblance of fact than anything else.

Because all the best things went to the regular army, the Home Guard got all the dregs that were left over. They didn't have proper uniforms until halfway through the war. They didn't even have any proper rifles until the Americans sent some over. They had to make up most of their own weapons, use whatever they had at home, or even break into museums and steal them.

Probably most hilariously, Churchill tried to help them out. He sent a letter to the War Office in mid-1941 to say that every guardsman had to have some sort of weapon, quote: "be it only a mace or a pike!".

...In response to this letter, the War Office produced 250,000 pikes.

Churchill was not pleased...

 

[Murphy]

Hi Murphy

I can't offer any help on Home Front info, but what types of reenactment groups are you looking at, Army, Navy, RAF or is your search for reenactment groups again specific to Home Front?

Thanks Fury

Preferably Home Guard but any which are local to me in Rochdale may be of help

 

[cordwangler]

Murphy - I've come across a few reenactment groups listed on the internet.

Shangas - I have to take issue with your "joke" comment. It might have been under-equipped in the early stages, but many of those involved would have seen military service and had a fair idea of necessary training. Bear in mind there was a war going on at the time with daily air raids in many parts of the UK and imminent threat of invasion. And the men in the local units would have to carry out their Home Guard duties well into the night, after working full-time under wartime conditions. All of this on very meager rations. And under more or less constant threat of invasion. I guess they would have seen how ridiculous it was to set a relatively poorly-equipped organisation of locals against the then unbeaten German military, and I suppose they put up with a lot of leg-pulling from friends in the military and pretty much everyone else - all of whom could also see the ridiculousness of the Home Guard in the scale of things.

However, the bottom line is that along with the stress, exhaustion and tedium of the work/Home Guard regime, there was the ever-present worry about what to do if there were a mass landing of paratroopers or full-scale invasion. Having spoken to men who served in these units, I suspect there would have been a great deal of soul-searching about the best way to look after their families in such circumstances.

Okay, so it wasn't frontline or combat service, but it was at least the equal of the infantryman's bad dream of constant guard duty after a hard day's slog.

Have you read about the auxilliary units? Not a Home Guard thing, but many of the people involved would have been in the Home Guard.

 

[Kishtu]

Murphy, I'm not big on Rochdale, but I'm originally from that part o't' world (tha can tell by t'accent) - might be worth your while keeping an eye on the Portland Basin museum in Ashton Under Lyne as they often used to have WW2 based civilian living history events.

Afraid other than that me and the Hairy Bloke do our civvie re-enactment at completely the wrong end of the country ;-(

 

[kiwilrdg]

I have seen some nice pictures of groups in the UK doing very good homefront interpretations.

I hope you find one near you, or you can start one. If you start one a good way to start might be as a side group to a regular infantry group so people who are working on their kit can fall in with the Home Guard in partial uniform until they are fully outfitted. You might find older guys wanting to convert to Home Guard.

If you can't find anyone there you can always come across the pond and help recruit people's pets with my Dogs for Defense interpretation, or walk the German Shepherd doing U.S. Coast Guard Beach Patrol.

 

[Shangas]

I didn't say that they didn't have any training - Nearly half of all guardsmen were WWI veterans. I just wanted to point out the fact that when the guard was formed, and for a while afterwards until around the middle of the war, they were poorly equipped. They had to make a lot of their own weapons themselves.

 

[kiwilrdg]

Shangas - I have to take issue with your "joke" comment.

I did not really see any "joke". An under-equipped force is not necessarily ineffective.

Ask any veteran of any conflict in an occupied land about what an under-equipped insurgent can do. It could be a bamboo crossbow or an artillery shell and a cell-phone in the more recent wars. If the Germans had invaded the UK on a large scale I would imagine the home guard would have managed to block quite a few of the roads with those pikes. A bullet is a bullet so even if they only had Martini-Henry rifles and muskets, the home guard would have delayed the Germans until the main force returned.

I took the comment as a more respectful appreciation of men who were not in the choicest condition who were ready to do whatever they could to defent their homes. Dad's Army was a great show that was very funny and in the end they got the job done with what they had.

 

[Doc Average]

The group "La Columna" specialises in Spanish Civil War re-enactment, but also does some LDV/Home Guard stuff too (see the links below). However, I think they're based in London and the south-east, which might make getting to their events a bit tricky for you.

http://www.lacolumna.org.uk/Event_osterley_2007.htm

http://www.lacolumna.org.uk/article_The_Home_Guard_A_Peoples_Militia.htm

http://www.lacolumna.org.uk/

If nothing else, they may be able to give you access to information and re-sources on the LDV, or point you in the direction of a more suitable group.

As far as uniforms and equipment go, Osprey Publishing are probably your best bet. Not sure if they have anything specific on the Home Guard, but they do publish a book on British Battledress from 1937 to 1961.

http://www.ospreypublishing.com/

Soldier of Fortune supplies repro and original British gear from the period, some of it specifically Home Guard issue.

http://www.sofmilitary.co.uk/re-enactor

There have also been some recent facsimile re-prints of original WWII Home Guard training manuals like these:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-British-Home-Guard-Pocket-Book/dp/1844861066/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Home-Guard-Manual-Campbell-McCutcheon/dp/0752438875

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Guerrilla-Warfare-Penguin-Special-Yank/dp/0141039272/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346331170&sr=1-1-spell

Good luck!

 

[Kishtu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Could_You_Please_Oblige_Us_with_a_Bren_Gun?

I am astonished no one has got round to mentioning Mr Coward's homage to the Home Guard....

 

[Warden]

Wot ho, just seen this thread so this link may have already been given, but re reenactment groups there are

Chatham Home Guard and Pitsford Home Guard.

Plus here is a pic of me defending the coast as a Home Guardsman http://www.twitpic.com/4jjq5j

 

[B-24J]

Home Guard

Hi Murphy,

Have you checked:

http://www.staffshomeguard.co.uk/AWELCOMEstaffshomeguard.htm#sitemap

http://www.staffshomeguard.co.uk/J10GeneralInformationReenactmentGroups.htm

Also, have you considered the Observer Corps?

John

 

[David Conwill]

Have you read KilroyCD's thread on his Homefront Commandos group? They're an American group, of course, but he may have some knowledge about folks doing LDV.

 

[Murphy]

Many thanks to all who have contributed to this thread. I now have plenty of leads to go on and hopefully will be able to find what I want .

 

[ChrisEM]

........... Not to be rude, but in all honesty, the Home Guard was a bit of a joke....Ever seen the TV series "Dad's Army"? That was more a resemblance of fact than anything else.....

Like one or two other contributors to this thread, I should like to suggest a viewpoint on the British Home Guard which differs from that offered by Shangas. I'm confident that the latter take would not be shared by the majority of those who have personal memories of those times, have looked at this subject in any detail or are related to the 1206 Home Guards who gave their lives.

The BBC TV programme "Dad's Army" was superb - a hilarious, affectionate caricature of the service. And I am sure that almost every HG platoon would have been able to record similar humorous incidents which occurred over the years of its existence. But funny as it was, it remained a caricature. And you have to look below the surface and to think a bit in order to see what underlay it all - and that was, more than anything else, a fierce determination on the part of Captain Mainwaring and his men to defend home and community and, in the furtherance of that, a willingness to lay down their lives if necessary. On a day to day basis that was over and above the willingness to volunteer for many hours a week of unpaid work - evenings, nights and weekends. - at the same time as holding down demanding, pressured jobs and somehow looking after their families - for four-and-a-half long years. At the beginning especially these were desperate times. Like Mainwaring everyone knew that there was a real possibility of having to make the ultimate sacrifice and nearly 2 million men offered themselves up in the full knowledge of this. Have a look at the story of one, obscure platoon written by its C.O. in late 1944: http://www.staffshomeguard.co.uk/HomeGuardingPages/29staffshg.htm

In contrast to the unfortunate members of the German Volkssturm - which was being built up as the Home Guard was winding down - these men thankfully never had to face the ultimate challenge and so their training, dedication and bravery were never tested to the full. But looking at all this from the comfort and relative safety of our 21st century lives, perhaps we should regard the efforts of those involved not as comic but just humbling.

I hope you are progressing with your intention of depicting the Home Guard, Murphy. A good choice from several points of view. You will find a lot of information and encouragement within this forum: http://wwiireenacting.co.uk/forum/viewforum.php?f=72

Chris

 

[kiwilrdg]

........... Not to be rude, but in all honesty, the Home Guard was a bit of a joke....Ever seen the TV series "Dad's Army"? That was more a resemblance of fact than anything else.....

Ideas like that is why it is good that there are people working to document the toils of people who were at home keeping their country running. We are running out of time to get the information from the primary sources. The level of sacrifice they made should not be considered to be the same as a sitcom (even though a quite good one).

All comedy needs to have a grain of truth. In fact I saw more accurate submarine references in the movie Down Periscope than I did in Crimson Tide but they are movies and do not give an accurate portrayal of historic events any more than Dad's Army, Hogan's Heroes, Kelly's Heroes, etc.

As a vetran I am rather apalled at the idea of dismissing an earnest effort to put up a defense as "a bit of a joke". If they were there with what is left they should be commended for putting forth an effort in a futile situation. I respect the effort that was made and there was never an adequate test of their strength to see if they could have held out through more and that means they were an adequate force that did not wase resources that were needed elsewhere. I am sure that the fact that they were ready to fight the Germans with 16th century weapons if necessary was something that was reported by intellegence and evaluated when the Germans decided not to try a blitz on the UK.

 

[esteban68]

My Grandfather was a 'Bevin boy' called up to the local colliery (coalmine) and after a 14 hour shift and a 3 mile walk to and from work he would patrol virtually every night with the HG, to be honest he loved it and admitted that at times it was rather like Dad's Army certainly at the start of the force, later he said it was made up of mainly young men colliers and the like who took it very seriously indeed.
Knowing my grandfathers honesty and tenacity I do believe that he and his colleagues would have given a good show IF the enemy had crossed the Channel.
The Home Guard and the Auxilary units ( a sort of HG SAS made up of poachers, farmers etc) plus the returning lads from Dunkirk would be all that was available to stop Mr Hitler from turning old Blighty into a rather large airbase that by all accounts he intended to use to threaten the USA if not directly attack it when he had perfected his Horten flying wing etc, which I seem to recall was going to be used as a long range bomber to drop the Nazi produced heavy water bomb, thank god the USA helped us out with lend lease and later troops or we'd all possibly be in schtuck?

 

[Edward]

Ever seen the TV series "Dad's Army"?

That was more a resemblance of fact than anything else.

Not really. It certainly popularised the notion that the HG were all old men, though in fact (as Harry the Warden can tell you better than I), the average age was 36. In the early part of the war, during which time the LDV was formed, conscription cut off at 35 years old, so there were plenty of men fit for duty in the Guard who fell outside that and who did sign up, alongside many who were in reserved occupations and not therefore called up. Northern Ireland (being under British rule then as now, and so not neutral as per the rest of the island) did not see conscription at all (for very obvious reasons), so there were many young men available there to serve in the Home Guard (little has been made of the HG over there as it was, I suppose, considered much less of a potential front line, albeit that Belfast was bombed several times, presumably by a Luftwaffe trying to target the shipyards).

Undoubtedly they were ill-equipped, and it is debatable how much difference they would have made in the face of a full-scale invasion and occupation by the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, but the popular Dad's Army image is not especially accurate. I have long believed that to some significant degree they were a propaganda exercise designed to boost morale at the home front, but given how close it got (had Hitler carried on the BoB for about another week he could have triumphed, making Operation Sealion viable), it must have been envisaged that they really could have ended up on the front line. I've often mused whether there might have been secret plans to use them as the backbone of a guerilla resistance force in the face of a Nazi occupation. The British military had certainly learned a lot about guerilla war from the Boers and the Irish by that point, which they could have put into practice.