A Conversation for Britain's Home Guard

A900190 - Britain's Home Guard

Post 41

Gilgamesh of Uruk

Shotguns : I think I got that from James Jones (author of From here to eternity) in his memoirs. I think it's part of the expanding bullet / dum-dum ban, and applies to shot. As you say, NOT a good weapon except for trench / house-to-house fighting, but in the early days, anything went. Some units seem to have paid local engineering firms to build mortars for them. There was probably a disparity over weapons issue - Warminton-on-Sea would probably have got more arms, and earlier, than Brownhills, where my father was in the Home Guard whilst awaiting call-up. They were commanded by a retired RN officer, and his "signal post" was on top of a slag heap, using semaphore - which would not appear to be conducive to a long life..


A900190 - Britain's Home Guard

Post 42

Who?

There's nothing like improvisation and there's nothing like a Brit to improvise.


A900190 - Britain's Home Guard

Post 43

Gilgamesh of Uruk

Just checked some figures - by early 1943, the Home Guard had 900,000 rifles, 19,000 Northover Projectors, 19,000 Spigot Mortars, 3,000 Smith guns, 250,000 Stens, 13,000 Tommy guns, 30,000 shotguns, 23,000 BARs, 20,000 Lewis/Browning/Vickers mgs. Beaverbrook produced "armoured cars" for his Min of Aircraft Prod HG units, too. They later got 100,000 Boys anti-tank rifles, plus some special 75mm guns and 2pdr anti-tank guns (plus the AA batteries & rocket batteries - over 50,000 HG served in Anti-aircraft Command to release men for service elsewhere). Also, around 50,000 women served in auxiliary roles (clerks, cooks etc) with HG.

Data from MacKenzie "Home Guard". the other widely available source book is Longmate's "The Real Dad's Army"


A900190 - Britain's Home Guard

Post 44

MB

There were actually several undercover organisations that operated independently of the Home Guard. It is a very complicated story. Have a read at "With Britain in Mortal Danger: Britain's Most Secret Army of WWII" by John Warwicker ISBN 1841451126. He has managed to unravel some of the story but still a lot of unanswered questions


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