Home Guard training documents discovered in attic

A set of documents showing how local Home Guard volunteers were trained during World War Two have been discovered in an attic.

The typewritten pages show scenarios to test how officers from E Company of the 4th (Forest of Dean) Battalion Home Guard, based in Mitcheldean, would respond to different situations, including finding four dead Germans lying near motor cycles at Westbury on Severn.

Found in his attic in Ruspidge, Bill Acland said he does not know who the "fascinating" papers, dating back to 1943, belonged to.

The documents have now been added to a collection of Home Guard artefacts at the Dean Heritage Centre, which will go on display over remembrance.

Full of local references, the documents include scenarios such as "Tayton (sic) Church Bells were ringing after a few enemy aircraft had passed from Tewkesbury way. About an hour or so later we saw some men in basin-shaped helmets go into the woods by Byfords".

Another scenario in the papers talks of Home Guard volunteers engaging German paratroops near the railway line in Longhope and that a "Section commander cannot afford a runner to go to Platoon HQ as he has had three men killed and a runner from Platoon HQ was seriously wounded on route".

It asks what message the section leader would send to the commanding officer.

Forest of Dean historian, Roger Deeks, said the 4th Battalion was divided into companies that covered various areas of the Forest of Dean and "they became more and more sophisticated".

He said the documents were "real evidence of how they were training people and making sure they understood how to respond to situations", including what messages would they send and would they send reinforcements.

"It's really putting what is potentially an NCO [non-commissioned officer] or an officer through their paces," he added.

Originally called the Local Defence Volunteers, the Home Guard was formed in May 1940 as the Government realised the threat of invasion was becoming more severe.

Bands of armed men were reportedly already patrolling the countryside at the time, so the then prime minster Winston Churchill and his staff decided the best outcome was to legitimise such operations.

Announcing the creation of the Local Defence Volunteers on the BBC Home Service, Sir Anthony Eden said: "Men of all ages who wish to do something for the defence of their country... Here, then, is the opportunity for which so many of you have been waiting."

Serving as a secondary home-defence militia, the force was made up of unpaid soldiers who were ineligible for regular military service.

The force later became known as the Home Guard on 23 July 1940 after Churchill coined the phrase during a BBC broadcast.

While the Home Guard at first was mostly made up of make-do uniforms and weaponry, the soldiers soon received military training and performed roles such as bomb disposal.

According to the Imperial War Museum, over the course of the war 1,206 men of the Home Guard were killed on duty or died from their injuries.

Bill said he decided to give the documents to the Dean Heritage Centre as he felt they "belonged in a museum somewhere".

"Its part of local history and there must be people out there with Grandparents or Great-Grandparents that actually served in these platoons," he said.

"It would be nice to 'bring it home' [the papers] to them, [the families]" he added.

Nicola Wynn, collections officer at the Dean Heritage Centre, said Bill's papers are a welcome addition to the collection as it "really helps understand what the men were doing during the war".

"It shows how serious they took the training and all the different scenarios they had to face".

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