The Home Guard
Early Days
In a broadcast of 14 July 1940, Churchill first referred to the new citizen army as the 'Home Guard', and the name stuck. Qualifications required were minimal: as one veteran of the First World War recalled, the Home Guard was the 'complete answer to the "old sweat's prayer"'. There was no medical examination - recruits were required only to be 'capable of free movement'. Experience with weapons was not deemed essential, which led to some hair-raising incidents in the early days. The upper age limit of sixty-five was not strictly observed; the oldest member of the Home Guard was well into his eighties and had first seen action in the Egyptian campaign of 1884-85.
Many of the early recruits were veterans of the First World War.
At first it was impossible to arm the LDV with anything like effective weapons, for what remained in the nation's armoury was needed by the regular troops, so the enthusiastic but untried platoons of militia found themselves equipped with all manner of unlikely instruments of war. Most recruits were armed with hastily improvised hand weapons, usually entrenching tool handles sporting adapted infantry bayonets. Some, it is true, were armed with pitchforks and broomsticks, though the true symbol of the LDV -the "pike" - was not issued until September 1941, when the threat of invasion had passed and the majority of Home Guard units were substantially better equipped. A length of drainpipe capped by a lethal 17-inch bayonet, the weapon was immediately unpopular and was rarely seen on parade. Others came readily equipped with personal sporting weapons and even flintlocks of unknown design or vintage.
Anthony Eden had promised the Volunteers that ’you will receive a uniform and will be armed'. At first the only item of uniform was an armband marked ’HG'. Weapons were equally scarce. A public appeal brought in 20 000 firearms, including a number from the gunroom at Sandringham. Later a large consignment of 1917 pattern American "Springfield" rifles arrived but these were never really popular and their .300 calibre made them incompatible with the much-admired British service rifle, the .303 Lee Enfield Mk 4. Only a lucky few, however, were issued with Short Lee Enfield rifles, which had been standard equipment in the First World War. For the rest, improvisation was the order of the day. In Manchester several rifles last fired in the Indian Mutiny were salvaged from the Zoological Gardens. In the props room at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, a long-forgotten cache of rusty Lee Enfields was unearthed and pressed into service. In Essex a former naval rating took command of a 'cutlass platoon'. Across the nation Home Guard units mustered clutching a weird assortment of weaponry: assegais brought back from the Zulu Wars, golf clubs, truncheons and, in at least one unit, packets of pepper ’to interfere with the vision of any persistent unwelcome visitor'.
Copyright © 2002 Peter
N. Risbey.
