FACTSHEETS

THE HOME GUARD

During the war, many people were afraid that the Germans might invade Britain. To try and make this as hard as possible, the Home Guard was set up. The Home Guard was often called Dad’s Army, as the men in it were too old to fight in the army. Once known as the Local Defence Volunteers, the names was officially changed to the Home Guard by Winston Churchill. Their main task was to be able to relieve the regular army of many tasks so that they could get on with doing the job that they were really trained for.

The Home Guard was made up of a general cross-section of the community, and again - as with the ARP - age was varied from the young teenager to the soon-to-be retired gentleman, although the Home Guard has always been depicted as a bunch of old men who are past it, and nothing more than a team who should have been pensioned off. Hence the nickname “Dad’s Army”.

The government set up ‘Home Defence Battalions’. These were groups of men aged 41 - 55 who were expected to protect the country if the invasion did happen. These men were not really well trained and often had no guns. Some of them would have fought in the First World War though, so they did have some idea of what to do.

Those who made up the Home Guard were: Ministers, Doctors, shop and store owners who closed shop because defence duties were given priority, farmers, builders, drivers, labourers, and even undertakers. In the very early days of the war, this happy band of men did not have uniforms or even rifles, and they often looked a peculiar sight as they marched dressed in normal, everyday clothes and carrying nothing but pitchforks, spades and lengths of timber.

The Home Guard’s jobs were to keep a lookout for German soldiers, to patrol the streets at night, to prepare defences in their area and to make sure that wartime laws were adhered to. The men in the Home Guard would still do their normal jobs as well.

The basic work expected of the Home Guard was that they should have an expert knowledge of their own towns, villages and the surrounding locality. They were to be a first line of defence against invaders: it was the Home Guard that was usually first on the scene immediately an enemy fighter pilot crash landed in a field! Here they were to hold them until the regular army appeared on the scene to take the pilot away for interrogation. They also had the job of guarding bridges, forming a patrol at many of the cities’ power stations and, on a number of occasions, guarded the entrances to many of Britain’s railway tunnels.

“The Home Guard harassed innocent civilians for identity cards, put up primitive road blocks... And sometimes made bombs out of petrol tins. In a serious invasion, its members would presumably have been massacred - if they had managed to assemble at all!”

Extract from “Life In Wartime Britain” by Richard Tames.

But over time, uniforms arrived, rifles had been sent from the United States, and slowly, they gained the esteem and confidence of the public. At its peak, there were 1,175,000 men that had volunteered for the Home Guard.

“DAD’S ARMY” (BBC 1968 - 1977)

The Walmington-On-Sea platoon of the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) - more commonly known as the Home Guard - is commanded by pompous bank manager Captain Mainwaring. Mainwaring is incompetent at both these jobs but still feels he will single-handedly lead Britain to victory in WWII. He is assisted (both at the bank and in the Home Guard) by Sergeant Wilson ("Would you mind awfully sort of falling in to three lovely lines, chaps?")

Notable characters among the lower ranks are Lance Corporal Jones (the local butcher), Private Frazer (a mad Scots undertaker), Private Godfrey, (an old man who lived with his sisters, Dolly and Sissy), Private Pike (a mummy’s boy excused from the real army due to his unusual blood type) and Private Walker (black market wide-boy about town). Completing the line-up were Bill Pertwee as Hodges, the prickly Air Raid Warden, and Frank Williams as the Vicar.

The "Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?" theme song, which sounds so authentically wartime (largely thanks to the unmistakable voice of Bud Flanagan), was actually written and recorded in 1967 / 1968 especially for the series by Jimmy Perry.