by Anton Rippon
The Chews replied: ‘Iris.’
Padre: ‘And the second name of the child?’
Parents: ‘Elizabeth, sir, after our dear queen.’
The padre dipped his hand into the waters of the font, made the traditional mark on the child’s forehead and said: ‘I herewith name this child Elizabeth, by which name she shall forthwith be always known.’
After the ceremony, as the more informal type of wetting the baby’s head took place, the padre was asked why on earth he had neglected to name the baby ‘Iris’. After all, there were expectations from an elderly aunt of that name.
The padre came straight to the point and said: ‘You are used to your surname, I don’t doubt. But I would have felt very sorry indeed for you, as the child’s parents, when she grew up and got her own back on you for the leg-pulling she would undoubtedly have suffered at school with a name like “Iris Chew”.’
T. H. Gibbs-Murray, Greenwich
During a weekend break, I was staying at RAF Long Kesh, which later became the Maze prison. We stayed there while our ship was being repaired, after slight damage, in Belfast dockyards.
On the Saturday morning, five of us visited the YMCA and, it not yet being opening time in the pubs, we decided to visit the riding school we had seen advertised in the YMCA. It was in a posh part of Belfast and, when we mounted our horses, folks came out into the street to see us. Almost every house had at least one person looking out from a window at the peculiar site of a bunch of sailors in uniform, riding horses.
George Harris, Dudley
Leading Seaman Frank Wilson, known as ‘Tug’, put in his request to the ship’s captain for compassionate leave to visit his wife for the arrival of their first child.
‘Negative!’ came the response. ‘Your presence was, no doubt absolutely essential at the laying of the keel, but not, repeat not, at the launching.’
T. H. Gibbs-Murray, Greenwich
My brother had quite a colourful war career. At one point he trained with the SAS. In Cyprus, his group raided an island and took a top-brass enemy officer, as well as the driver of a big Mercedes, captive. They left with their targets and placed a note on the windscreen of the car: ‘Sorry, we have no use for the car.’
Gladys Lutterloch, Yeovil
My husband told a tale of the day he went for his medical, just after he joined up. He was very concerned because he would be facing a woman doctor. So he reluctantly lined up with the others, all of whom, like he, were ‘starkers’. But that doctor cut through all the embarrassment when she asked: ‘Does someone’s mother use Persil?’ When my husband looked around, he realized that his very naked, very white body was lined up between two strapping black men.
Mrs C. G. Atkins, Bourne, Buckinghamshire
My brother served in the Western Desert. He had been working on tank maintenance and was taking a break so that his comrade could take a photograph of him proudly showing off his lovely new red beard. Suddenly an enemy aircraft was sighted and started to drop ‘eggs’ as he called them, and blasted off low-level cannon fire. They dived for cover under the nearest vehicle, all of which were draped in camouflage netting to avoid enemy detection. When the plane was eventually chased off, they emerged only to discover that they had been sheltering under an ammo truck.
Gladys Lutterloch, Yeovil
I was in the RAF and we were playing a football match at Uxbridge. I was taking a corner when suddenly there was this huge explosion. Everybody, including their goalkeeper, threw themselves to the ground and the ball sailed straight into the empty net, or at least it must have done because when we all got up again, there it lay. The explosion hadn’t been caused by enemy action but by the UXB boys detonating a landmine. I would claim that I scored the only landmine-assisted goal in the history of football, but the rotten referee made me take the corner again.
Cardew Robinson, Twickenham St Margarets
I was on leave with my mate from the same town, and after we’d got off the train we decided to call into the nearest pub for a couple of pints before going home. The landlord hadn’t even got time to pull our pints before the air-raid warning siren went off and everyone, including mine host, dashed out for the shelter, which was a public one in the street. He didn’t even bother to lock up and we just sat there. Well, my mate looked at me, and I looked at him, and I think it crossed both our minds that we could lean over the bar and pull our own beer. But we did the decent thing because we weren’t dishonest men. We just drank up everyone else’s beer that they’d left on the bar and various tables. Then we shot off. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t a raid but I often wonder what those other customers must have thought when then they came back into the pub after the all-clear sounded, and found that all their drinks had disappeared. Just empty glasses left. Needless to say that we didn’t use that pub again. Also needless to say, I’d prefer it if you didn’t put my name to this.
Anonymous, Chester
In 1945 I was in the RAF. The war, by then, was going well and we had the Nazis on the run. One day, someone posted a notice that read: ‘If aircraft in camouflage markings are spotted, it will be the RAF. If aircraft painted silver are spotted, it will be the USAAF. If no aircraft are spotted, it will be the Luftwaffe.’
Roy Burns, Derbyshire
I was employed as an electrician to the War Department. The commanding officer at one camp where I was stationed was walking around with four other ‘brass hats’. As he passed me, he said: ‘Hello, sparks! How is the world treating you?’
I replied: ‘Very seldom, sir, very seldom!’
And they all laughed at that.
Later, I had a wiring job in the quartermaster’s stores where they were kitting out a newcomer to the ranks with a new battle dress. The conversation went something like this:
‘How’s the blouse?’
‘Okay.’
‘How’s the trousers?’
‘Okay.’
‘Blimey, we’ve got a ruddy cripple here!’
There were only two sizes, you see – too big and too small.
Another time I was working at a German POW camp when a grey-haired German told me that he was an electrician and that he used to have his own electrical business. I asked him what he meant by ‘used to have’.
He just shrugged: ‘Along come RAF. Poof! No business!’
W. Lodge, Benfleet
Every Sunday evening at the Napoleon Inn at Boston in Lincolnshire, the ringing of a bell silenced the crowded bar. Then a voice called: ‘Absent friends!’ and glasses were raised to all those former customers serving in the armed forces. The weekly ceremony was connected to the pub’s comfort fund that eventually raised over £1,000 for those absent friends.
David Smith, Lincoln
In 1945, Mrs K. Pearson of Southfield Avenue, Paignton, was expecting a parcel from her son, who was serving in the RAF. It contained his dirty laundry. A fortnight went by and still the parcel was not delivered. Then she received another letter from her son: ‘Since I last wrote, my parcel has turned up, all nicely washed and ironed, with no word inside to show who had sent it.’
Letter to the Sunday Express, February 1945
LOOK, DUCK AND VANISH
Is that wonderful BBC television series Dad’s Army in any way an accurate portrayal of Britain’s Home Guard during the Second World War? After all, we would hardly think that another series, ’Allo ’Allo, in any way reflects the French Resistance during those harrowing years. Yet one has the feeling that some of the goings-on in the Walmington-on-Sea platoon are not so far removed from reality.
It was on 14 May 1940 that an announcement was broadcast asking for volunteers for the Local Defence Volunteer Force. In August, the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, ordered the name to be changed to the Home Guard. What would become a legend in British history was born.
The original idea was that this citizens’ army would try to delay invading German forces until the regular army could be rushed to the scene. But they were poo
rly armed and, as brave as they might have been, it is difficult to imagine them holding back a highly trained, well-armed force, using only a collection of sporting and museum-piece firearms and bread knives tied to broom handles. Eventually, better arms and better training transformed the original ragtag army into an organization that may well have proved an inconvenience to German paratroopers. But still . . .
The forming of the Home Guard was a response to what was already happening. As the threat of invasion became very real, up and down the country there were reports of bands of civilians arming themselves with shotguns, air rifles and pitchforks, ready to stick it to the Hun. The government had two options: to quash these grass-roots resistance fighters; or to harness them into an official organization. Thus, the Local Defence Volunteers were formed without any budget or any staff. And from there, as the Home Guard, it developed into something resembling a military force.
The early signs were encouraging, at least from the point of view of numbers if not of efficiency. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had told those interested to register their names at their local police station and they would be contacted when required. Inside the first twenty-four hours, more than a quarter of a million men had left their details, more than had been in Britain’s regular peacetime army.
The government anticipated that around 150,000 men might answer the call to part-time arms. By the end of the second month, over one million had applied to join the LDV (‘Look, Duck and Vanish’, as it was unkindly dubbed in some quarters). By the time the Home Guard was stood down in December 1944 – the threat of invasion having long since passed – its number still stood at one million, and it had never dipped below that. A year later, on 31 December 1945, the organization was disbanded. But its name was indelibly printed on the history of the Second World War.
Nevertheless, the relationship between the Home Guard and the War Office was generally an uneasy one. Lieutenant General Sir Henry Royds Pownall, the first Inspector General of the Local Defence Volunteer Force, complained: ‘They are a troublesome and querulous lot . . . there is mighty little pleasing them, and the minority is always noisy.’ (In the interests of balance, it should be noted that historian Brian D. Osborne, in his account of the Home Guard in Scotland, wrote that although Lieutenant General Pownall – who was Chief of General Staff for the British Expeditionary Force in France and Belgium until the fall of France in May 1940 – might have appeared ‘a high-quality appointment’, in fact, Field Marshal Montgomery thought him ‘completely useless’.) All of which adds to our picture of how the Home Guard was viewed in some quarters.
My father-in-law joined the Home Guard in 1940. He was twenty-six years old and, as an engineer at the Rolls-Royce aero-engine factory, held a reserved occupation that prevented him from joining up – or saved him from that fate, whichever way one wants to look at it. Talking to him long after the war, I formed the opinion that the Home Guard platoon of which he was a member bore some resemblance to Captain Mainwaring’s outfit. There seemed to be plenty of larks and zero danger. His recollection was that it was something akin to grown-up Boy Scouts. That is not to demean members of the Home Guard. If the Nazis had invaded the British mainland, even if their effectiveness would have been minimal, who is to say that the real Dad’s Army wouldn’t have fought bravely? In the meantime, they kept calm and carried on.
I was a supervisor at Luton Airport and joined the Home Guard. After being supplied with ill-fitting uniforms we had our first parade where the order was given that greatcoats must be worn. Unfortunately, I’d left mine in the car, so I rushed out to get it, put it on and then discovered that all the buttons had been cut off. My son had been swapping army buttons at school. Further along in the line, a colleague had buckled his belt inside out. The captain asked: ‘Do you need to wear glasses?’ But the worst of his scorn was reserved for the man next to me, who’d somehow managed to put on his greatcoat over his pack. The captain said: ‘You should have been in the Camel Corps.’
When we had rifle practice, one man was firing away like mad at the target that was 200 yards away on a wall as big as a house. But not a mark was to be seen on the target. When the captain pointed this out, the man replied: ‘Well, they’re leaving here OK.’
Tom King, Flitwick, Bedfordshire
My husband was assigned to a Home Guard AA unit. It meant him rushing home from work and dashing to catch a train to the site. On the platform he came face-to-face with his CO and duly saluted smartly, only to be told that it was customary to salute an officer with the hat on the other way around.
Another incident that stays in my memory was the night my husband couldn’t stop chuckling after he came off duty. It seems the squad were practising loading the anti-aircraft guns, and the ammunition was being passed from one man to another, and then to the man feeding the gun. The man in the middle of this operation had to walk several paces to hand over the ammunition. He took the ammo, walked a couple of paces, put it down carefully on the ground and fished in his pocket for his handkerchief, then blew his nose. The resulting bellow from the sergeant needs no description.
Zoe Paton, Southampton
The Home Guard was being drilled in a village near Plymouth.
‘Number off!’ said the sergeant.
One man started walking down the road.
‘Hey, you!’ said the sergeant. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Come back here!’
‘Sorry, sir,’ said the man. ‘I thought you said bugger off!’
Mrs D. A. Hanning, Plymouth
This Home Guard private used to wear a wig under his cloth cap, but for night duty he was ordered to wear a metal helmet. Obviously it was nowhere near as comfortable as his cap, so at the first opportunity he discarded it. Someone found it and returned it to HQ. When he was asked how he’d lost it, he replied: ‘It blew away in the wind, sir.’
An NCO who had a rather timid voice was drilling a company of Home Guard on the clifftop. When being marched towards a precipice, one of the front rank was heard to say: ‘I wish he would say something – if only “Goodbye”.’
A young Home Guard member was on the rifle range. Having overcome his fear of the weapon, he proceeded to place two hits on his own target and three on his neighbour’s. Everyone fell about laughing when he received two reprimands – one for wasting ammunition, the other for spoiling someone else’s target.
John Harvey, Launceston, Cornwall
I was working at A. V. Roe’s Chadderton when I joined the Home Guard. About forty of us were on parade in a single line, with rifles and one round of live ammunition each, in an enclosed paddock by the side of the mill. At the far end of the line, the CO, a regular officer from a southern regiment, stood on a three-feet-high dais. All the lads on parade knew at least something about the firearm. I’d been on night work and, although I didn’t know it, I’d missed quite an important part of the drill. The CO bawled the order to load. I hadn’t a clue. I watched what was happening and followed suit, so I thought.
‘Safety catches on!’
‘Guv, where’s the safety catch?’
‘Fire your rifle!’
‘Hell’s bells,’ I said to the bloke on my right, ‘where’s the safety catch?’
He gave me a startled look, but offered no help.
‘Fire your rifles!’
In a cold sweat I squeezed the trigger . . . whee-ee-ee! The bullet flew out, high into the heavens. Every eye was on me.
‘Step out that man!’
I stepped one pace forward.
‘Why wasn’t the safety catch on? Sergeant, this man must have rifle drill. He’s shot an old woman in Urmston.’
Fred Cawte, Heywood, Lancashire
During the very early days of the war, we lived in a row of houses that faced the local electricity supply company and power station. We had long back gardens with side entrances that led out onto the road just opposite. One Sunday morning we were startled to see a whole row of camouflaged men creeping up through the b
ack gardens. My seventy-year-old aunt, whose word was law in the house, threw open the bedroom window and called down to ask who they were and what, precisely, they were doing. The sergeant quickly stood up and said that they were the local Home Guard on a practice manoeuvre. They were, it seemed, pretending to ‘storm’ the electric company. But Auntie said: ‘Never mind that, you must all clear off at once.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, but there is a war on and we must practise. What would you say if we were Germans?’ the sergeant asked.
‘The same as I am telling you lot! I never allow anyone to trample all over my garden.’
Mrs M. Wilkinson, Uxbridge
My young brother was in the Home Guard, prior to joining the RAF. He was sent out one night to help search for a German airman, alleged to have parachuted into the area.
My brother found himself in the pitch dark, beside a high fence, from the other side of which he could hear an agitated shuffling. He scrambled up to look over but slid down the other side and into the middle of a flock of hens!
Getting to his feet, he stumbled about as he tried to get out of the garden, stepping on a rake, the handle of which sprang up and hit the rim of his helmet with a loud clang. He remarked that, after all that racket, any German would have made for Land’s End.
Miss P. Manser, Maidstone
My husband was Grade 4 so did not join up but went into the Home Guard. One night he was on duty at Battersea Power Station by the Thames. Suddenly he saw a lot of white objects floating along the river. It being very dark, owing to the blackout, he mistook these mystery objects for German parachutes. Only when they got nearer did he realize they were a family of swans!