HOME GUARD COMPANION

Humour and fun à la Dad's Army. At its inception, the Home Guard really did use metal pipes, bayonets, table legs and antique guns, but by 1942 was a well-trained professional army. The 80 episodes of our beloved Dad's Army portrayed an image of bumbling incompetents, but all together there was plucky spirit of a population fighting alone against an oppressive aggressor with only 21 miles of sea to protect the nation. Over a period of a few months, young and old, this rag-tag group was armed, uniformed and trained using this very manual. They learned how to construct booby traps, destroy tanks, ambush the enemy, survive in the open, basic camouflage, read maps and send signals, know all about their rifle and other weapons like Molotov Cocktails, field engineering and explosives, street fighting, and traffic control and signals. Here too is advice to Young Officers and NCOs and a typical syllabus. The original 1941 and 1945 publication has been reproduced in facsimile to the best possible quality given the age of the original, and there is line art throughout and diagrams and in addition at the back of the book is an essay on Home Guard Humour with a good number of contemporary cartoons to illustrate. 256pp.