HOME GUARD GUERRILLAS

An April 1943 article in Parade, repackaged a January 1943 article from Picture Post, describing a training course organised by 28 Bn, London Home Guard.  Describing the use of camouflage and ambush hides, the articles proclaimed the role of the Home Guard 'To snipe, harass and kill an enemy at every turn, from hedges, trees, wall, windows, slag heaps, rubbish heaps, that is the intention: continuous killing and the invader never seeing the defender'.

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By 1943, however, the War Office was trying to  downplay any guerrilla role of the Home Guard. The invasion threat had largely disappeared and the priority now was for the Home Guard to take over regular army guard and ant-aircraft duties from troops training for D Day. 

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In the more desperate days of 1940, propagandists had promoted, internationally, Tom Wintringham's exhortations for guerrilla warfare, as a means of convincing the Nazis that any invasion of Britain would be more difficult and costly than anything they had faced previously. Around 5,000 potential guerrillas were trained by the unofficial Osterley Home Guard Training School, where Wintringham was Chief Instructor,  between July and the end of September. Students were then sent back into the regions to extend their knowledge base to others.  Even officers from the regular army were discretely sent here to observe this new form of training which an Intelligence Officer from the Auxiliary Units admitted was better than what they could provide at the time.

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The approach of Osterley was uncompromising.  Students were advised to file their bullets into illegal  'dum-dums'; to bury their uniforms and blend back into the local community; to fight on with  revolvers and explosives in secret teams of 2 - 3; trained to destroy ammunition dumps and poison wells. This was an aggressive approach: 'Since offence is the best form of defence, operations against such units must be carried into areas which may be overrun by the enemy'. Wintringham also warned 'Remember that the guerrilla has to work like a ghost'. Much of this is similar in to what would be taught to the Auxiliary Units but there are, however, two key differences.  

1) There was an expectation that the guerrillas would fight on without uniform and therefore the protection of international law.

2) The course also made virtue out of necessity and students were taught how to make home-made explosives, time delay devices and grenades. 

 

This all had the advantage on not making the guerrillas reliant on official supplies, meaning that they could continue their sabotage as a civilian resistance after any enemy occupation. This was exactly the methodology that SIS promoted in encouraging European resistance movements but was fundamentally different to the methodology of the War Office Auxiliary Units. . The contents of 'Yank' Levy's Guerrilla Warfare also  suggests that they were  taught other techniques of longer-term resistance, including those of non-cooperation,  underground newspapers and graffiti campaigns. 

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The concern of MI5 (though not necessarily SIS - whose Section D was described as being without morals or scruples) was that such techniques of underground warfare, taught by ex-members of the Communist Party and spread beyond official controls, might be used against the State in the future (see Socialism and the HG). For the War Office Osterley presented the risk of the Home Guard developing beyond its control and weakening its strategic focus on static defence.  As a result, the Osterley School was closed down as soon as the immediate invasion threat declined in October 1940.  Its successor at Denbies, which continued to employ most of the Osterley instructors,  was instructed not to court the same degree of public attention for its methods.

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With the media lauding of the new Commandos, many  Home Guard sought to share in some of their reflected aura and  created its own local 'commando' units from some of its younger and fitter volunteers. Several of these units  were trained in the real commando schools or by local army PT instructors. As a mark of their status, some such units wore distinctive lanyards and all sought a version of the iconic commando fighting knife. As many of the Home Guard were in reserved occupations in the engineering sector - some simply made their own out of industrial hacksaw blades or cut-down WW1 bayonets! The Fairbairn Sykes knives themselves were soon put on public sale and Sheffield cutlers also made their own versions to meet demand. By the end of the war, the now mass-produced 3rd Pattern FS knife  was being widely sold in regimental stores as a prestige item. The discovery of an old 'commando' knife in a dusty attic might therefore have a complicated story to tell!

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This is indeed a very  different picture of the Home Guard than that presented by TV's Dad's Army.  Think Captain Wintringham rather than Captain Mainwaring!