Tough Guys of the Home Guard Moorland Patrol

Camp News, Volume 3, Issue 140, 18 September 1942, Page 2

Tough Guys of the Home Guard Moorland Patrol

(A. W. Brockbank

Tough guys of the Home ‘Guard are the men of the Moorland Patrol—a special unit recruited mainly from city workers in Manchester and trained to fight in the wild moorland on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border. They became the first Home Guard Commandos in the- country. No man in the “foreign legion” as some of their pals call them, is over fifty. He must be physically fit and capable of remarkable endurance since the weather in the country of his patrol is sometimes the worst in England. For his own safety, he must , learn to walk to a compass bearing, • possess the shepherd’s ipstinct for dangerous ground, know how to take care of himself and his pals in the moorland mists which so often blanket that wild part of the country, and learn to live on iron rations. Because guerilla warfare has always been part of their training the moorland patrol have become th’e Home Guard’s invisible men. They have brought the art of camouflage and unseen movement to a fine degree of perfection. This is the sort ,of winter training they have been doing. One night they advanced over two miles of moorland to fixed, points from ■ three bases, thence on compass bearings to positions for attack at zero hour, followed by attack on a tank harbour.

in the “Daily Mirror.”)

Observers in the tank harbour afterwards confessed that they neither saw nor heard any movement. With soil-stained faces and hands the moorland patrol became a ghost army that struck silently in the dark. They are skilled in fieldcraft, camouflage, map reading and route finding. Scouting and patrol work and night fighting are an important part of their training. Up to September, 1941, patrols were maintained nightly, whatever the weather, without a single patrol losing its way in this extremely difficult moorland country. After September, the patrols “were withdrawn, but on' two nights a week patrols have been taken to the moors not become rough and coarse. Bad weather has not - interrupted this training, which almost rivals in its toughness that .of the Regular Army. ■ Each man learns how to walk e silently in the dark and crawl invisibly by day. Some of the men are exScouts and have trained their colleagues in tracking, and in reading nature’s ever-changing face. , The patrol has become one of Britain’s most potent guerilla bands, and since their own particular ‘ region of moorland is near the Lancashire 7 industrial field, the importance of the guards in .the event of a parachute attack is obvious.