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Group photos

This building was the backdrop - and perhaps the home in one way or another - to a somewhat less peaceable group of men in October 1944. This a few of them - out of a wide panoramic picture - outside the front door. (Click on thumbnail to view). I have the whole group online if anyone wishes to see it. Officers and NCOs of the 22nd Warwickshire (Birmingham) Battalion, Home Guard.

Chris
(Image source: Peter Rowberry and staffshomeguard)
22ndWarks3Sectionw1318.jpg
 
ChrisM said:
This building was the backdrop - and perhaps the home in one way or another - to a somewhat less peaceable group of men in October 1944. This a few of them - out of a wide panoramic picture - outside the front door. (Click on thumbnail to view). I have the whole group online if anyone wishes to see it. Officers and NCOs of the 22nd Warwickshire (Birmingham) Battalion, Home Guard.

Chris
(Image source: Peter Rowberry and staffshomeguard)
View attachment 131392
Click to expand...
thank chris for pic
 
Just a general note on my recently posted image and on almost all in this thread and elsewhere. Whenever I put a group image online in my Home Guard website, I try to do it using the maximum magnification which the original print will permit. This is in order to assist identification. This recent image and its associated ones are a case in point. It has to be virtually a 100 percent statistical certainty that they show a relative of one member of this Forum or another - perhaps grandfather, perhaps great-uncle, perhaps even father. But from bitter experience, I have long since concluded that the chances of anyone coming up with an identification are almost nil.

From this I have decided that it is almost impossible for any of us to pick out a face which we have not known personally – and (from my own personal experience) even that of someone we DID know all those years ago is difficult in the extreme. Viv may be coming to a similar conclusion based on experience in this excellent thread. It's very disappointing but it shouldn't keep us from keeping on trying, of course. Assume disappointment and then one might, just conceivably, be pleasantly surprised one day!

Chris
 
ChrisM said:
Just a general note on my recently posted image and on almost all in this thread and elsewhere. Whenever I put a group image online in my Home Guard website, I try to do it using the maximum magnification which the original print will permit. This is in order to assist identification. This recent image and its associated ones are a case in point. It has to be virtually a 100 percent statistical certainty that they show a relative of one member of this Forum or another - perhaps grandfather, perhaps great-uncle, perhaps even father. But from bitter experience, I have long since concluded that the chances of anyone coming up with an identification are almost nil.

From this I have decided that it is almost impossible for any of us to pick out a face which we have not known personally – and (from my own personal experience) even that of someone we DID know all those years ago is difficult in the extreme. Viv may be coming to a similar conclusion based on experience in this excellent thread. It's very disappointing but it shouldn't keep us from keeping on trying, of course. Assume disappointment and then one might, just conceivably, be pleasantly surprised one day!

Chris
Click to expand...

Chris, a quick question if I may.
Did Home Guard personnel have a personal number ?
 
That's a very good question, maypolebaz, one I am not 100 percent sure of the answer to and therefore I'm going to have to waffle!

I don't think I have ever seen, anywhere, a personal reference number associated with any Home Guard man. Certainly nothing on Proficiency Certificates, other administrative paperwork, King George VI certificates and so on. And I'm absolutely sure there was never a national, numerical register of membership. It was all too scattered and local for that. But nevertheless, it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't have been a numbered register of members of a particular Battalion (anything between 1000 and 2000 men) and so, in that case, each member would have had some sort of number. But, as far as I can tell, if it existed at all it was just never used on a day-to-day basis.

So unlike the normal forces where (certainly in my case in National Service RAF) if you couldn't remember your last three numbers, you didn't get paid!

Chris
 
My brother worked as a telegram boy at the central post office, he only got a red pedal bike :) he broke his ankle putting his foot down heavily coming down Kingstanding hill in the fog and trying to avoid a hidden parked car.

Did we really have fogs that thick in the fifties? Makes today's moans about air pollution a bit ott. :)
 
I think those heavy fogs of the fifties were called 'smog'. They were dense due to the smoke laden atmosphere which coalesced with the low cloud. Apart from the difficulties of getting about it caused serious health issues for many and even death.
It was serious enough to bring about subsequent clean air acts in most cities.
However, it was not confined within city boundaries, outlying districts were also affected.
 
Radiorails said:
I think those heavy fogs of the fifties were called 'smog'. They were dense due to the smoke laden atmosphere which coalesced with the low cloud. Apart from the difficulties of getting about it caused serious health issues for many and even death.
It was serious enough to bring about subsequent clean air acts in most cities.
However, it was not confined within city boundaries, outlying districts were also affected.
Click to expand...
I think the medics must have had great difficulty deciding if it was the fog or the fags that killed you in those days.
 
A Sparks said:
Yes to the fog in the 50's!
I can remember walking to junior school and hardly being able to see very far in front of me - quite spooky and disorienting.
Click to expand...
They were so thick that the lorries using Chester Road and following the kerb, could not see the far kerb at Lakehouse Road and often turned in there, sometimes two or three together. There used to be some straining pulling the non-power steering, steering wheels to get across the bay that the entrance made and back on to the Chester Road. I have seen people there with torches, guiding the lorries across the entrance.

Bob
 
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