Dad's Army

'Once you reached sixteen you were required to join one of the local services such as ARP or Home Guard or Civil Defence, consequently from the age of 16, I was carrying a rifle and bayonet. I was in the Eigth Battalion Home Guard, Worcestershire Regiment. Our company headquarters were the top floor of Morris's Hardware shop at Headless Cross, in those days it was the Co-op shop. That's where we used to meet and train. We guarded the electricity sub-station which is now in the middle of the Vaynor Estate but then it was in the middle of a field.”

“The Home Guard was formed in 1940 by Anthony Eden after Dunkirk. It was called the Local Defence Volunteers, promptly nick-named 'Look Duck and Vanish'. When I watch Dad's Army there are so many things that are similar, so many parallels. I know this is a comedy programme. but it was all in dead earnest. We were a mixture of old men and young men and nearly all the officers and NCOS were First World War men. World War 1 hadn't finished so many years before. There were still people around who were only in their fifties but had fought in it and had been in the trenches in France and Belgium.”

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