The Home Guard and 'Dad's Army'

Local Defence Volunteers

In the opening episode of 'Dad's Army', Britain's Home Guard (or rather, as it was called originally, the Local Defence Volunteers - or LDV) was born in broad daylight, on Tuesday 14 May 1940, inside the office of George Mainwaring, the pompous but fiercely patriotic manager of the Walmington-on-Sea branch of Swallow Bank.

He turned on his wireless just in time to catch the end of the broadcast by Anthony Eden, the secretary of state for war, addressed to 'men of all ages who wish to do something for the defence of their country':

Off went the wireless and on went Mainwaring, 'Right!' he barked at Wilson, his worried-looking assistant, 'Let's go to it!'

The historical reality, back in the summer of 1940, had not, in fact, been very different from the fiction. The date - 14 May - had been the same, although it was not until shortly after nine o'clock in the evening that Eden spoke to the nation via the BBC's Home Service.

Neither he nor his government had previously shown any enthusiasm for a policy which involved ordinary citizens, fearing imminent invasion, being allowed to take matters into their own hands instead of relying on the orthodox forces of security and public order (namely, the Army and the Police). However, when reports began reaching the War Office concerning the appearance up and down the country of 'bands of civilians...arming themselves with shotguns', it had been clear that the time for a rethink had arrived.

Without much agreement as to whether the aim was to sustain or suppress this burgeoning grass-roots activism, Eden and his advisors proceeded to improvise some plans and, as one observer put it, evoked 'a new army out of nothingness.'

A new order

Corporal Jones, from 'Dad's Army'  © Form lagged behind content. The Local Defence Volunteers was launched without any staff, or funds, or premises of its own. Eden had simply instructed his listeners 'to give in your name at your local police station and then, as and when we want you, we will let you know.'

In the opening episode of 'Dad's Army', Mainwaring, after appointing himself commanding officer ('Times of peril always bring great men to the fore'), marches off with Wilson and young Pike to the local church hall, where the eager volunteers - including Frazer, Godfrey, Walker and Jones - are invited to sign their names on paying-in slips and become part of what Mainwaring is confident will become 'an aggressive fighting unit.'

The wartime reality, again, was similarly shambolic. Before Eden's broadcast had ended, police stations in all regions of the nation found themselves deluged with eager volunteers. By the end of the first 24 hours, 250,000 men - equal in number to the peacetime Regular Army - had registered their names.

Although the age range was meant to run from 17 to 65, it was not strictly enforced at the beginning, and more than a few old soldiers contrived to creep back in (such as Alexander Taylor, a sprightly octogenarian who had first seen action in the Sudan during 1884-5).

Membership continued to grow at a remarkably rapid rate: by the end of May the total number of volunteers had risen to between 300,000 and 400,000, and by the end of the following month it exceeded 1,400,000 - around 1,200,000 more than any of the Whitehall mandarins had anticipated. Order did not need to be restored: it had yet to be created.

Uniforms and weapons

The Home Guard at rest (in 'Dad's Army')  © It was a while before the men of the Local Defence Volunteers were able to look - let alone feel - like 'proper' soldiers. Eden had promised them uniforms and weapons, but neither was in evidence during the early days of the LDV's existence.

Mainwaring's newly-formed platoon had to make do with humble armbands for military outfits, and such makeshift 'weapons' as pouches of pepper, pikes, pitchforks and catapults - 'They'll be using conkers next!' - before, belatedly, a set of ill-fitting denim uniforms and a modest supply of rifles arrived.

It was just the same back in 1940. Most new recruits were forced to wait several weeks before official uniforms were sent out, but in some cases the denims came without the caps, or the caps arrived without the denims.

The wait for proper weapons was longer still. While the War Office searched for suitable arms from abroad, the eager volunteers proceeded to improvise: rolled umbrellas, broom handles and golf clubs were adapted for military service, and all kinds of antique fowling-pieces, blunderbusses, carbines and cutlasses were dusted down for action.

A number of World War One era rifles began arriving from the US and Canada later that first summer, and eventually the War Office supplied units with such cheaply-made devices as the Sten gun (summed up by one underwhelmed volunteer as 'a spout, a handle and a tin box') and the Northover projector (which fired grenades with the aid of a toy pistol cap and a black powder charge, and was likened by one who used it to 'a large drainpipe mounted on twin legs').

The feelings of frustration, however, never faded: too many men, for too long a time, found themselves still unfamiliar with firearms.

Churchill's Home Guard

Local characters and the Home Guard, as depicted in 'Dad's Army'  © The first series of 'Dad's Army' came to a close with a visit to Walmington-on-Sea by none other than the prime minister, Winston Churchill. This represented an entirely apt conclusion, because no other public figure had identified himself so closely, and emotionally, with the real-life LDV.

It was Churchill, for example, who was responsible, in July 1940, for the change of name from Local Defence Volunteers ('uninspiring', in his opinion) to Home Guard ('much better', he declared). It was also Churchill who saw to it that the Home Guard began to receive proper military training sessions, and a more orthodox administrative structure, as well as regular boosts to its chronically fragile morale: each year, on the anniversary of its formation, a national 'Home Guard Day' was held to make the force feel, in Churchill's words, 'that the nation realises all it owes to these devoted men'.

The relationship between the Home Guard and the War Office was never very easy - 'They are a troublesome and querulous party', grumbled Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall, the Army man first charged with supervising the running of the force. 'There is mighty little pleasing them, and the minority is always noisy'.

The part-timers continued to put in requests for more and better arms, equipment and instruction, however, knowing that they had the ear of the prime minister. 'The HG are voters first and soldiers afterwards', Pownall conceded. 'What they think they need, if they say so loudly enough, they will get'.

Farewell parade

At the start of the final series of 'Dad's Army' - set in 1942 - the Walmington-on-Sea platoon is frustrated to find that the townsfolk no longer take the prospect of invasion seriously. The fiction, yet again, was faithful to the facts.

Ever since the start of the Blitz in September 1940, the Home Guard had come to be valued more as a key contributor to civil defence (liaising with the police and the fire-fighters, clearing rubble, guarding damaged banks, pubs and shops, assisting in rescue work and generally making itself useful in crisis situations) than as a bona fide anti-invasion force.

As soon as the fears of invasion started to fade, however, the feelings of redundancy started to form, and by the middle of 1943, with the Germans seemingly well on their way to defeat, the Home Guard had lost much of its sense of purpose, and absenteeism had grown increasingly common.

The force's slow but inexorable decline dragged on until October 1944, when the government announced that the Home Guard would be stood down the following month. There would be no gratuities or medals, but, following Churchill's intervention, the men were allowed to keep their battledress and their boots.

On Sunday, 3 December 1944, at a farewell parade in Hyde Park, King George VI, the Home Guard's Colonel-in-Chief, declared: 'History will say that your share in the greatest of all our struggles for freedom was a vitally important one.' At its peak the force had numbered 1,793,000; 1,206 of its men had either been killed on duty or died from wounds, and 557 more sustained serious injuries.

They had cost little, but contributed much. It was therefore meant sincerely when, on 13 November 1977 - Remembrance Sunday - the very last episode of 'Dad's Army' bowed out with a special toast: 'To Britain's Home Guard.'

Find out more

Books

The Home Guard by SP MacKenzie (Oxford, 1995)

The Home Guard by D Carroll (Sutton, 1999)

Dad's Army by G McCann (Fourth Estate, 2001)

Dad's Army: Walmington Goes to War edited by R Webber (Orion, 2001)

The Home Guard by D Carroll (Sutton, 1999)

About the author

Graham McCann is author of the recently published Dad's Army and Morecambe & Wise. He writes regularly on politics and culture for a wide range of publications.