British Home Guard

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The Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) or Home Guard, was instituted by the British government during World War II to defend the UK in the event of an invasion by Germany. The Home Guard was comprised mainly of men who had seen active service in World War I and some who were too young to be in the regular army, or who were in reserved occupations.

The British Home Guard started off as the brain child of the Commander in Chief Walter Kirke. Witness to the destruction of Poland in September 1939, Kirke knew that it was but a matter of time before the tanks and warplanes of the Wehrmacht came to England's doorstep. Kirke also knew that, in such an event, Britain would be woefully underprepared.

As early as 1939, following the torpedoing of HMS Royal Oak at anchor in Scapa flow, Scotland, Winston Churchill wrote a letter to his Chiefs of Staff asking, "what would happen if 20,000 enemy troops were to land on the east coast of England."

General Kirke founded the LDV in February 1940. Initially devised as a means to defend the critical port of Dover, the ranks swelled quickly with local volunteers, too old to enlist but eager to fight. Though not yet acknowledged by the British government, they began training to operate the batteries of four, six and nine inch artillery pieces which defended the port. Trained seaward to repel naval bombardment, these gun emplacements doubled in number with emergency positions which were being assembled even as the British Expeditionary Force left for Europe. While the coastal guns and the LDV stayed behind, the BEF marched to the borders of France and into battle.

The actions in Europe proved the British armed forces to be ill-prepared for the type of war being fought. Outmanoevred and overpowered by German Blitzkrieg tactics, British troops showed themselves psychologically capable but simply outperformed by their adversaries. British troops needed more training, and that took time and resources which Britain did not possess.

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Official recognition

Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden announced the creation of the LDV in a radio broadcast on 14 May 1940 and asked for volunteers, four days after the German Blitzkrieg started in France and the Low countries.

We want large numbers of such men in Great Britain who are British subjects, between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five, to come forward now and offer their services in order to make assurance [that any invasion would fail] doubly sure. The name of the new force which is now to be raised will be the Local Defence Volunteers. This name describes its duties in three words. You will not be paid, but you will receive uniforms and will be armed. In order to volunteer, what you have to do is give your name at your local police station, and then, when we want you, we will let you know...

The announcement met with near-universal enthusiasm and over a quarter of a million men tried to sign up within the next 24 hours. The government had expected 150,000 men to volunteer in total, but by the end of the first month 750,000 men had volunteered. By the end of June 1940, the there were nearly 1.5 million volunteers and the number never fell below a million for the rest of the organisation's existence although the peak was 1.8 million in March 1943.

On 17 May, 1940, the Defence (Local Defence Volunteers) Regulations 1940 was passed, which officially brought the LDV into existence. Within ten days, the BEF had been pushed back and surrounded at Dunkirk.

The Home Guard served as a cover for the Auxiliary Units, a force of more highly trained volunteer troops that would function as guerilla units if the UK was invaded.

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After Dunkirk

In the rushed evacuation from Europe, the British Expeditionary Force left much of its heavy equipment behind on or around the beaches of Dunkirk. Included among this were 40,000 assorted vehicles (including tanks), 400 anti-tank guns and most of its artillery pieces. Lighter equipment was also lost and many troops returned without even their rifles. One soldier wrote in his diary, "we arrived armed only with shoulders, we didn't even have cigarettes."

Thirty days after the surrender of France, Hitler issued Fuhrer directive no. 16. This order laid out the plans and preparations for the invasion of Britain, Operation Sealion (Unternehmen Seelöwe). Although the details were not known to the British, it proposed that the invasion would proceed not as a concentrated thrust, but as a 40 mile wide landing, starting at Ramsgate and extending to the Isle of Wight. Moreover, in order to mount such an operation, the Royal Navy would have to be destroyed, which in turn required that the Luftwaffe obliterate the RAF. Coastal artillery from Cap Gris Nez would punch a hole through anticipated coastal defenses to ensure a safe landing zone for 160,000 German troops. Finally, it must all be done by August to avoid winter storms.

The British were on the defensive, and for this they were largely unprepared. The Belgian front, an English network of trenches and pillboxes, had quickly collapsed in the face of enemy tanks and artillery. In fact, the only defences capable of stopping the German advance were, ironically, French. The Maginot line alone remained defiant, lasting a full month after the rest of the nation capitulated. However, at one hundred and sixty miles long, the Line had taken five years to build and consisted of over one hundred forts connected by a massive tunnel network and manned by over eighty divisions of French troops. Britain had fifteen divisions of unequipped infantry to defend four hundred miles of beach, and at most, six months do it.

The British had been able to observe the invasions of Poland and later Norway and experience fighting in France had provided advanced warning of their own inadequacy in battle. Finally, and most important of all, they had witnessed the full range of German tactics. In Poland, the Axis had shown themselves capable of mounting a swift and effective surprise attack. In Warsaw, Germans revealed their methods for urban combat. In Norway and the Netherlands, paratroopers landed ahead of the invasion to cause chaos well beyond what became the front lines. In France, the German Panzer divisions simply went around the Maginot line and operated a sickle shaped charge towards Paris. The lessons of Europe would prove critical in the summer of 1940.

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Weapons and training

Initially the Home Guard were very poorly armed, since the regular forces had priority for the weapons and equipment available. As the Local Defence Volunteers, their original role had largely been to observe and report enemy movements but it swiftly changed to a more aggressive role. Nevertheless they would have been expected to fight well-trained and equipped troops with negligible training and weapons such as pitchforks and shotguns or firearms that belonged in a museum. Patrols were carried out on foot, by bicycle, even on horseback, and without uniforms - although all volunteers wore an armband that said "LDV".

On 23 July 1940, the LDV was renamed to the 'Home Guard', a name suggested by the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Within a few months they started to be issued with proper uniforms and equipment as the immediate needs of the regular forces were satisfied, but it was not until 1943 that they were a properly trained and equipped force. They were frequently equipped with improvised weapons, or non-standard ones purchased by the government from abroad. As an example large numbers of P17 rifles were purchased for the use of the Home Guard. These used the (30-06) cartridge - an American 0.30 inch round which was a totally different ammunition from the 0.303 round used by the British Lee Enfield rifle. A 2-inch wide red band was painted around the fore end of the stock as a warning since a 0.303 round would load but jam the rifle. That the P14 rifle was also supplied in the 0.303 calibre that would take the British round only added to the confusion.

The Home Guard inherited weapons that the regular Army no longer required - such as the Blacker Bombard anti-tank weapon - or desired - such as the Sticky bomb. Their arsenal also included weapons that could be produced cheaply without consuming materials that were needed to produce armaments for the regular units - such as the Northover Projector - a blackpowder powered mortar, the No 76 Special Incendiary Grenade - a glass bottle filled with highly inflammable material, and the "Smith Gun" - a small artillery gun that could be towed by a private motorcar.[1]

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Paratrooper defence

The use of German Paratroopers in Rotterdam, where Fallschirmjager landed in a football stadium and then hijacked private transport to make their way to the city center, demonstrated that nowhere was safe. Worse still, the airborne abduction attempt of the Dutch Royal family had failed only because the Dutch had possessed detailed plans of the operation well in advance. To counter the threat of an airborne assault, the Home Guard manned observation posts where soldiers spent every night until almost the end of the war anxiously watching the skies, and initially armed with a cup of coffee and a shotgun.

To spread word in the event of an invasion, the Home Guard set up a relatively simple code to warn their compatriots. For instance, the word 'Cromwell' indicated that a paratrooper invasion was imminent, and 'Oliver' meant that said invasion had commenced. Additionally, the Home Guard arranged to use church bells as a call-to-arms for the rest of the LDV. This inevitably led to a series of complex rules governing who had keys to belltowers, also the ringing of church bells was forbidden at all other times. The British defence relied heavily on improvisation and ingenuity.

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Anti-aircraft defences

The first line of defense against the Luftwaffe was detecting incoming raids. Even before the war, Britain had invested much time and resources into the construction of the CH, or Chain Home radar line. The CH system which dotted the English coastline operated on a twenty four hour schedule, and could detect incoming aircraft from well over seventy miles away. Moreover, to find low-flying planes, which could avoid detection at less than five hundred feet, the British also operated the narrow wavelength Chain-Home: Low system, which detected planes traveling low yet still over five hundred feet. These gave the British sufficient warning to allow their fighters to reach the necessary altitude before the arrival of the bombers.

Once inland, the movements of German aircraft were visually tracked and reported by the Royal Observer Corps, a unit formed in 1925 and not strictly speaking part of the Home Guard although also manned by volunteers. It eventually grew to over 40,000 men and women and 1,500 observation posts nationwide, their work allowing the RAF to know the strength as well as location and direction of their enemy, and therefore permitted them to predict the target and defend it with the minimum fuel consumption.

Aircraft proved to be a menace throughout the war. Operating in both day and night raids, the defense against the Luftwaffe required huge amounts of anti-aircraft construction. For the British, heavy anti-aircraft weaponry was in no short supply. With over a thousand HAA guns divided across seven divisions, the British troops had guns in a quantity rivalled only by variety. In the early months of the war Great Britain still used Great War surplus armaments in the form of a truck-mounted 3 inch gun which provided more enthusiasm than firepower. The next largest was the QF 3.7 inch gun, which shared some of the anti-armour capabilites of the legendary German 88 mm gun. The largest guns were the 4.5-inch and the enormous 5.25 naval surplus which had to be mounted on a turret to operate effectively. Though the Royal Artillery handled most of the shells physically, the men of the Home Guard often filled in as adequate replacements. From April 1942, Home Guard Anti-Aircraft units were formed and by 1944 these units had taken over many anti-aircraft batteries, operating artillery from the light to heavy guns and also the semi-secret rocket batteries (also known as "Z-batteries")

The aiming and management of communication, however, was the sole domain of women of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). Indeed on the Wirral, Cheshire, the physical shortage of men, who were guarding the beaches, required women to operate the town's single AA battery alone.

The HAA stations could stop a high flying bomber but not the fast moving escort fighters and the dreaded Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers which came with them. The Light Anti Aircraft was in dire shortage thanks to a lack of direction and planning. In the 1930s, the British had expected to use their own Vickers 2 pounder "pom-pom", but with complex multiple gun mounts weighing 800 lb it was limited to Royal Navy use. Therefore they turned to foreign sources.

In 1937, the British Army had ordered one hundred of the Swedish Bofors 40 mm gun. The Bofors had attracted immediate international attention as a weapon of quality. Britain had trialled the gun and arranged licensed UK production. With engineering revision and reduction, the British produced it twice as fast at half the cost. Yet even so, in March 1940, even the USS Saratoga had more of these guns than the United Kingdom. Production steadily increased at 200 or more per month by mid 1940 but production was not expected to match requirements until 1942

In 1939, the only other supply of LAA was a hastily conceived plan to purchase Breda 20 mm guns from Italy. However, the Tripartite Pact ended that possibility.

Yet even with the impressive series of anti-aircraft defences which spread across the island over the next four years, emergency precautions were taken to reduce the danger to civilians. The ARP (Air Raid Precautions) Civil Defence Service was independent of the Home Guard and was controlled by the Home Office. Men and women alike offered their services as fire fighters in the Auxillery Fire Service, but 'fire watching' (reporting of fires in commercial buildings & dealing with individual incenduary bombs) was compulsary for all civilians in towns. Early warning observers were used during the V-1 campaign. All of these jobs served to relieve the local population.

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Coastal defence

Despite a history of coastal defences stretching back to the days of Henry VIII, the concept of a beach landing simply had not occurred to the British high command. The result was a series of ports guarded by 6 inch and 9 inch guns, (a pair of World War One 18 inch Bochebuster guns was deployed immediately after Dunkirk) surrounded by open undefended beach with nothing but the sand to block a landing army. To remedy this, the Home Guard was charged with guarding the beaches as well. The Home Guard produced a coastline peppered with unarmoured gun emplacements, armed with old First World War naval guns. Worse still, some of the LDV manning these positions were untrained and armed with little more than shotguns. Others, such as Robert Neal, had rifles dating from the 1880s, and wrote in his diary, "I don't know what they expect me to do, I can't even use my own gun, much less this enormous contraption next to me." In the event of an invasion at that time, the beaches would undoubtedy have fallen to German forces.

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Later years

Even once the threat of invasion had passed, the Home Guard remained in existence manning guard posts and performing other duties to free up regular troops for duties overseas. In 1942 the National Service Act allowed for compulsory enrolment where units were below strength. At this time, the lowest rank within the Home Guard, 'volunteer', was renamed to 'private' to match the regular army usage.

However following the successful invasion of France and the drive towards Germany by allied armies, the Home Guard were formally stood down on 3 December 1944 and finally disbanded on 31 December 1945.

A modernised version of the Home Guard was briefly re-established in the 1950's. It did not last more than a few months before being disbanded again.

The Home Guard was immortalised in the British 1960s television comedy, Dad's Army (1968-1977), as well as featured in a Disney film called Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971).

Noel Coward wrote a song in 1943, "Won't you please oblige us with a Bren Gun?" that pokes fun at the disorder and shortage of supplies and equipment that were common in the Home Guard, and indeed all of Britain, during the war.

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See also

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External links

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