People's War by Calder Angus

Author:Calder, Angus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

XII

The Home Guard, however, had maintained much of its old appeal. Though the danger of invasion had receded, there was always the fear (or the hope, for the keener men) that the Germans might make a desperate bid, or at least attempt commando raids.

In 1941, when the danger had still seemed very real, Invasion Committees had been set up in all town and country districts, to take charge if the Germans came and to mobilize such useful things as cars and megaphones in the emergency. These remained in existence until 1944. But after the onslaught on Russia, whatever hysteria about parachutists and Fifth Columnists had still remained had been rapidly eroded. Tom Driberg reported with delight in November 1942 that some boroughs had recently been asking their citizens what public services they would undertake in the event of an invasion, and that two answers from the West End of London had been:

I could drive a car any day except Thursdays, as I go down to Kent on Thursdays to see my husband.

My maid and I would be glad to help in any way from five to seven any evening except at the week-ends, when we are always in the country.86

The Home Guard had been increasingly regularized and disciplined from August 1940 onwards. In that month, Home Guard units had been affiliated to the county regiments, and promised regimental badges. In October 1940, recruiting had been temporarily suspended. In February 1941 ranks, as in the regular army, with commissions for the officers, had been introduced. All officers had been reviewed and many had been purged. So the Home Guard had become, as it were, part-time regular soldiers. When the Government had lifted its ban on recruiting, it had begun to use the Home Guard as a training ground for boys of seventeen and eighteen prior to their call-up.

Bureaucracy had always been latent in the Home Guard, but with regularization it had run riot. Commanders were inflicted with swarms of trivial circulars and had to spend precious evenings worrying about such minutiae as the total numbers of buttons in store. The climax of Home Guard red tape had probably been reached in April 1942, when full instructions had been issued on the burial of Mohammedan Home Guards.

However, equipment had greatly improved, both in quantity and quality. Whenever boredom and frustration had seemed likely to overwhelm the Home Guard, a new toy had usually been found to raise interest again. Thompson machine guns had made a brief appearance, and had been replaced by crude-looking but efficacious Sten guns. The Northover Projector was an equally graceless anti-tank weapon, but fun to use. There was much joy with new types of grenade. In the autumn of 1941, however, the War Office had lost its touch in these matters and had produced the notorious issue of steel pikes, which remains one of the best remembered gaffes of the war. ‘Lord Croft’s Pikes’, so-called from the junior minister who had issued them, had made the Home Guard feel that they were back in the primeval days of 1940.

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