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Home Guard

Jaffa said:
Great knowledge... Thanks for taking the time to share it here.

I think my father was living in Erdington during the war, so would that have come under Birmingham or Sutton I wonder?

He never said much, that generation never did, but I do remember him saying something about A.A. (either guns, rockets or both) being on the roof of Lewis's department store... There was some irony about most people taking shelter underground during an air raid whilst the Home Guard were going onto the roof of the tallest building in the city!... I've never heard any other accounts of A.A. on the roof of Lewis's, maybe it was a big secret?... I really don't know.

I'll have to dig out his notebook.... Due to wartime restrictions, army instruction books were in short supply and volunteers had to copy the instructions and drawings in their own hand.... There may well be more info in his notebook.
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Jaffa, thanks for your kind words. One or two points arising from your various comments.

Unless he entered Home Guard service directly into anti-aircraft duties, your father would very probably have served initially in 23rd Warwickshire (Birmingham) Battalion Home Guard whose territory was Erdington. I have various bits of information online in the staffshomeguard website about this unit and a few of its members.

Rooftops would have been appropriate places to locate light anti-aircraft weaponry and it doesn't surprise me to learn this was the case for Lewis's. Local defence of this type was prevalent. Only useful in the event of low-level, daylight raids. This was the arrangement adopted by a platoon of the Streetly Home Guard in order to protect the local area (which definitely included the Hardwick Arms pub!) although I think that this was even more DIY than many of the others. (See winter 1940/41 images below).

The serious anti-aircraft work was obviously performed by various batteries of heavier a-a weaponry, such as the one your father subsequently served on. The firepower of such units was huge and the impact on local communities when they were operated must have been immense.

Whilst printed training material must indeed have been in short supply I'm not so sure that the need to write everything down in personal notebooks during training was really such a bad idea. It may well have made some facts stick in the mind more effectively than if they had been received in some post-lecture handout. Seems to have been the norm for military training at that time – I have seen something very similar in the early training of a Royal Flying Corps pilot.

Hadn't heard previously of the existence of the Home Guard Grenade Training School. Does anyone have any idea where it was located? With that central telephone number I strongly suspect that there weren't too many live firing exercises on the premises!

You have some really interesting stuff which many Home Guard historians would almost certainly like to see. Congratulations on preserving it and thanks for letting us know about it. I'd be happy to make suggestions if you feel you want to share it more widely, in memory of your father and his service.

Chris

(Images source: Kate Cutler)

LewisAAGrouppw365(154).jpgLewisAAw500.jpg
 
I'd be happy to share... I see that the Staffs Home Guard page have a page dedicated to the 105th Warwickshires.... Are there others that may be better?
 
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