DERBYSHIRE AT WAR 1939-45

A thorough account of the Home Front in a region which backed up troops by manufacturing munitions and maintaining essential industries to 'keep the home fires burning', as well as hosting, educating and caring for thousands of evacuees. The region had two regiments: the Sherwood Foresters and the Derbyshire Yeomanry. Chatsworth House was used by Penrhos College and Hardwick Hall gave much of its park and lands over to military barracks and a gymnasium space for interned Italian prisoners. Learn that Glossop and Buxton were surrounded in absolute secrecy to protect them from the shelling by Luftwaffe aircraft as they held the largest store of ammunition in the country in underground tunnels through Harpur Hill. In Crich parish, there were WVS first aid exercises where members would mock up injuries on themselves with dirt or lipstick and present themselves as 'casualties'. There are brilliant black and white photographs included from the old silk mill in Derby and a photograph of the moors between Howden Reservoir and Margery Hill which claimed several plane crash victims, to an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) warden in gas-protection clothing. Paperback, images, 102pp.