The Home Guard In Britain

Northern Advocate, 26 December 1940, Page 7

The Home Guard In Britain

It was seven o’clock in the evening, somewhere on the north-east coast, states a correspondent in the “Manchester Guardian.” A party of war correspondents had been inspecting Britain’s defences for nearly 12 hours. They were exhausted and far behind their time schedule, * for everywhere they had been pressed to look at just one more defensive scheme or to come and see the pill-box which its proud creators were certain was more ingeniously camouflaged than any other in the corps area. One engagement remained, and they wondered whether they could ask to be excused it and so get back to their base in time to write something that night. But immediately it was obvious that there was no hope for us. The brigadier who awaited us whisked us away to see the scheme he had prepared. He made us stand twenty yards away from a firing trench and was as delighted as a boy when we stared straight at it and were quite genuinely unable to see it. He showed us inno-cent-looking buildings which were really fortified posts. He had even staged a mock invasion in which Lancashire Fusiliers charged across a golf course to hurl the invader hack over the cliff's, and carriers and motorcycles brought the reserves tearing up to the threatened point. And in no time we had forgotten our weariness and were enthralled for the tenth time by the keenness and ingenuity of everybody we met. Fascinating Experience. This sort of thing was happening throughout the four days’ tour of the Northern Command which I have just completed. It was an exhausting but fascinating experience. The multitude of problems created by the threat of invasion are mainly of a kind not dealt with in textbooks. This is a new situation which makes a direct call on the soldier’s own resourcefulness and ingenuity. Every local commander has had to think very hard for himself, and he takes the inventor’s pride and pleasure in the plans which he has finally evolved. The general plan for our defence against invasion is obvious enough. Since the point or points of attack are unknown, large forces must be held in reserve, ready to be rushed up to any threatened point on a wide arc. Meanwhile the forward troops defending the beaches will fight to the last man and the last round. There are no qualifications about that. There will be no retreat in any circumstances. Their business is to delay the attacker at all costs while the supports come up.

But while the forward troops must remain unmoving, those in the rear must move forward or to a flank as fast as possible. The pressure of this problem has already produced big changes in the mobility of our Army. A corps commander in the Northern Command told me that his corps was now 100 per cent, mobile.

Developing Communications,

Again, there have been developments in communication. Speed of news will be all-important if invasion comes, and it is being carefully fostered. Communication .between planes and ground troops in action by signals and the dropping and even the picking up of written messages by aeroplanes in flight is increasing. Exercises in mobility and in dealing with an unexpected attack by sea or air are constantly taking place, and I saw some of them this week. I have mentioned an exercise in repelling a beach landing. It was based on the worst and most unlikely assumption, that the enemy had scaled the cliffs. After seeing the miles of barbed wire in the sea itself, the quantities of guns which are ready to sweep every yard of beach with cross-fire from hidden concrete emplacements, and the strong points farther back, I was ready to believe that it would take a strong enemy to do that.

Experiments of various kinds are always going on. Our armoured cars, for instance, which were intended to play in Continental warfare the part of scouts making contact with the enemy's advancing tanks, have now another role to play—that of hunting down any future parachutists. That is a duty ‘ which demands speed and handiness rather than protective armour, and one cavalry unit which I saw has in use five types of armoured car with different virtues to suit different uses. The type and siting of road blocks, too, of which there are an enormous number in this command, are still being studied and sometimes altered; on my way home today I saw one concrete road block being demolished.

Home Guard’s Co-operation,

In this area (and no doubt in others too) there is close co-operation between the Army and the Home Guard. At one important sea-coast town which is now officially (and to a large extent actually) a fortress I found a road exit flanked by two pillboxes, one of which was manned by the Army, the other by the Home Guard. The two services were sharing here the duty which in more open country belongs, along with observation, to the Home Guard —that of what the Army calls “static defence,” a sublime understatement for putting your ammunition on the kitchen table and defending your house until you and it are wiped out.