From: Tim Merry (timmerry@SHOAL.NET.AU)
Date: Wed Apr 28 1999 - 11:53:46 PDT
On 27 Apr 1999 Tom Holloway wrote:
>.
>Annabel Maurice asked.....
>
>>3) The Home Guard- Did it successfully deterr Hitler? What problems did it
>>face?
>>Did most civilians believe in it? What sort of training did the men undergo?
>There was a lot of scepticism at first. Drilling with broomsticks and
(snip)
I was still at school. At age 17 (and with parental consent) we were
allowed to join the school Home Guard Mobile Unit (sounds fantastic,
doesn't it!). I finished up as a Section Leader having some five boys
and two masters under my command :-) We were 'mobile' because we had
two cars belonging to masters, the school truck, and two motor-cycles
belonging to boys, to give us a degree of mobility not usual in country
Home Guard units I believe. (When the Home Guard organisation began it
was called the LDV, standing for Local Defense Volunteers.)
In the country, I think the Home Guard was well supported. Many of the
local farmers would have had the experience of WWI behind them; I recall
seeing them on training 'exercises' carrying their shotguns. At school
we boys had some military training as a matter of course, so we imagined
we were pretty smart, and would give the enemy plenty of trouble! We had
Canadian rifles ourselves, given to us by the government in exchange for
our WWI rifles which were needed by the army; and we had uniforms.
>4) Bombing-what was it like during the blitz? were you, as a child well
>informed of the dangers?
My home was in central London, and we didn't take too much notice of the
blitz. Life had to go on. We never went down the air-raid shelters
ourselves; but there was a shelter close by if we needed it. My mother
did voluntary work, like spending a couple of hours, about twice a week,
serving tea and sandwiches to people down in the shelters. She would walk
back home afterwards along the pitch-dark deserted pavements, wearing a
'tin-hat', to the sound of anti-aircraft fire and the tinkling of pieces
of shrapnel falling from the sky onto the street. How about that!
>6) rationing-how did you feel about this system? was life better before or
>after rationing?
School food was not as good as before the war. To provide three meals a day
for hungry lads must have been quite challenging. Once (only the once) we
were given tripe for lunch, with an apology that unfortunately there were no
onions to go with it! But we got by all right. The English have many
virtues but, alas, an aptitude for cuisine is not - or was not then - one of
them, which could have made rationing harder to endure. Meals at home
weren't bad at all, but the variety was rather limited. I believe Tom was
right in saying that the population as a whole was much healthier during the
time of rationing than before the war. But speaking personally, I think
'life after rationing' was, and still is, to be preferred.
The restaurants and Lyons Corner House establishments operated pretty much
as usual, so as long as you could afford to eat out sometimes you could
supplement your rations in that way. Country people, I imagine, lived well
enough foodwise.
Tim