Dad's Army Tells Only Half The Story (9 March 1973)
I did not arrive in Bletchley in time to see its Home Guard companies. I wish I had. I heard quite a bit about them in my first few years here. In fact, the references still crop up – but sadly most of them are now found in the death notices of former members.
I hope the general impression young people today have of the Home Guard and its members is not that which is usually given by the Dad’s Army series on television. What you see there is half the truth. The funny half. I enjoy it. But similar yarns were told about life in all the services. I doubt whether, in total, the Home Guard was any funnier than the rest.
I myself always had a wholesome respect for the Home Guard and one which increased right up to their final stand-down parade which I witnessed in London towards the end of the war.
“But what could that lot have done against regular troops?” you may ask. And there you would show your ignorance of matters military. A good proportion of the Home Guard were old soldiers. You couldn’t tell them much they didn’t already know. A further good proportion were chaps such as famers who, being used to knocking off hares and such like with single shots, could hardly fail to hit much bigger targets.
Put that little lot properly armed on their own midden and you would lose more men than they would before you winkled them out. Some proof of this was given after the war in the major competitions at Bisley, where several Bletchley Home Guardsmen performed so convincingly against all-comers.
Bletchley had two companies. “A” company looked after the town and some villages; “B” company, mostly railway and post office employees, looked after those installations.
“A” company HQ was the former police station in Simpson Road. In charge for a long time was Lieut. Gen. Harold Blount, of Woughton.
“You could tell to the minute what time it was by his comings-in and goings-out,” former Police Insp. William Merry told me. Which isn’t surprising. A man doesn’t get to that rank in the Royal Marines without knowing all about discipline, especially self-discipline, and much more besides.
Certain areas were marked to be defended to the last and rations were kept there for a siege. This didn’t include the council offices. They were to be blown up, if necessary!
And the company’s battle HQ was behind the Bull Hotel, not in it.
Naturally, our local Home Guard veterans have their own fund of funny stories. One concerns a man who was posted sentry and ordered to stay still and silent in all circumstances except those for which action is normally required. He did. And for 15 minutes a curious heifer licked and slobbered all over him, before it gave him up as a bad job and bunted him into a ditch.
Another man laid his trip wires so successfully that they toppled into a camouflaged cess-pit.
And there was a sergeant who accidentally let off his sten gun in the guardroom and blew a hole through the roof, etc. etc.
I first bumped into the Home Guard while in the army. On a dark winter’s night two of us were supposed to be patrolling about a mile of unfamiliar seashore with two rifles and five rounds between us. We could hardly see anything and could make only slow progress on the shingle in the howling gale that was throwing some of the sea on to the beach and the rest into our faces.
Suddenly we stumbled head down into two big fellows who promptly challenged us and held their bayonets too near our bellies for comfort. The Home Guard! We had gone into their patch without knowing it. It ended with a laugh. But there was no question about who had the drop on who (sic) at half past two in the morning.
A long time later I was with a unit that had been humping stores for about twelve hours in support of the second front. We were more or less dead beat when we walked out of the gate. But coming in was a large body of the Home Guard, ready to continue the humping all through the night, having already done a normal day’s work.
We also had with us two or three old-soldier civilians who had been employed at Woolwich Arsenal. One morning one of them was nearly half an hour late. The major told him off. A few minutes later one of my fellow NCO’s stuck his neck out by saying: “You were a bit rough with Mr… weren’t you, sir? He’s in the Home Guard and was on one of those rocket guns that were blasting off last night.”
The major sent for the man and was beginning an apology when the man, a holder of the Mons Star, stopped him. “You were right first time, sir,” he said. “I got home at seven; I should have been here at eight.”
That was Dad’s Army.
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