LDV/Home Guard in Coventry

[Spuffler]

I wondered if anyone has any info about how the LDV/Home Guard was organised in the Coventry area.

My father never joined the Home Guard, though he had to do shifts of fire watching at Humber. I'm presuming that fire watching was compulsory but LDV/HG voluntary? My father-in-law was in the HG in Brinklow (which is where he lodged during the war); he drove the local HG's armoured car. (I didn't know they had armoured cars before that!)

I find it hard to imagine that anyone actually believed that the LDV or Home Guard was ever going to be a useful force; not only is that rather borne out by the Landwehr's efforts in Germany, but if an invasion had happened, the Germans were highly likely to be extremely mobile, and to use e.g. paratroops, panzers, etc, to encircle and eliminate any pockets of resistance very quickly. A city like Coventry would have been virtually impossible to defend - there aren't any natural features offering good defensive lines - and the only benefit in trying to defend it would have been to slow down an advance a little. The only time a city is easy to defend is when it's totally a ruin (as Caen in Normandy) so as to provide many good places for snipers and ambushes, and there wouldn't have been a lot of point in trying to defend a totally ruined city except as a slowing exercise - and a costly one, at that. And there certainly wouldn't have been any point trying to defend factories after an invasion for much the same reason.

Perhaps someone has more information on the subject?

[dutchman]

From what I know of infantry tactics they would have been next to useless. I suppose they were useful for arresting downed German airmen though.

I've seen underground bunkers in the Pool Meadow area which looked as if they could have been occupied by Auxillary Units. For the uninitiated, Auxillary Units were a highly secret organisation recruited from volunteers within the Home Guard who operated in a similar manner to the SAS.

[Spuffler]

I didn't realise that there were bunkers within the city (and presumably others). I guess the Auxiliaries would have been trained at Audley End House in Essex, where many SOE were trained. There were quite a number of SOE training bases, including Lord Montagu's house at Beaulieu. I was vaguely aware of Coleshill House, but didn't associate it with LDV activities.

How big were/are the bunkers under Pool Meadow? I've seen the ones on TV in other places - usually woodland - but they weren't very big, and didn't to me look like they would have remained secret for long, since the Germans weren't ignorant fools, they would soon have worked out where raiders were coming from! Some years ago there was an excellent talk by an ex-agent (I don't know if he was SOE or MI6) to our local TV ham radio club. He made it very clear that you underestimated the Germans at your peril. He also said that they became very effective at locating agents and winkling them out; you had to have really brazen courage to avoid capture. Somewhere like Pool Meadow surely wouldn't have lasted long once the city was occupied; even if each group acted alone and didn't use radio comms, they must have needed to forage for food, they had to emerge to do their sabotage etc., so it would only have been a matter of time before they were caught and annihilated. Added to the general vulnerability within a city, where would they have acquired camouflage? And of what sort? I believe that these Auxiliaries were to wear uniforms so they could claim to be regulars if caught (a forlorn hope of pulling that off!!) so they would stick out like a sore thumb in a city.

Are there any plans around for what they were going to do to defend the city? I know there were trenches in various places (as in London at Green Park - why they needed trenches in parks, goodness knows!!) and presumably there must have been a roster of meeting places like church halls?

[dutchman]

How big were/are the bunkers under Pool Meadow?

Thye weren't in Pool Meadow itself but buried behind the buildings in neighbouring Cope Street. There were about five of them linked by narrow tunnels to each other and and by equally narrow shafts to the surface. I was told they were air raid shelters and that might be the case but I've never seen air raid shelters like those anywhere else. I have seen pictures of an Auxiliary Unit bunker and they each looked exactly like that. The tunnels and shafts were only just wide enough for a very fit adult to crawl through from one bunker to the next or to climb to the surface. Each bunker was just big enough for one man and his equipment. At a squeeze you could probably fit a family of two adults and two children sitting haunched but it would have become very uncomfortable, very soon. A single bomb, no matter how small, falling down one of the shafts would have killed everyone in every bunker instantly.

Are there any plans around for what they were going to do to defend the city?

Not that I know of Spuffler but even if they exist it is understandable that they would not be made public. For example I'm pretty sure the temporary "art gallery" next to the Council House was used as a control bunker for local officials. Likewise the huge cavern under Owen-Owen whch still exists.

[Spuffler]

"but even if they exist it is understandable that they would not be made public" After 70 years I can't see the point in keeping such things secret. But then, some details in the government archives relating to Edith Cavell's trial and execution are still kept secret after almost a century, as also are some details relating to Prince Yusupov and the murder/assassination of Rasputin.

[Despite all the hoo-ha about Cavell being a martyr, she and two of her nurses were shown by the archives to have been spying; also, it's pretty clear that Yusupov was acting on behalf of MI6 - Rasputin had a lot of small calibre bullet wounds (I think they were .27), and one .455 calibre hole in his forehead, obviously from a British service revolver (a weapon used by SIS/MI6); also Yusupov was spirited away by MI6 to London, and spent the rest of his life there, dying in 1967. But it doesn't make sense to keep any details secret still after so many years; however, this country is one of the most secretive where government is concerned, and things like secrecy become an end in themselves.]

Your description of the bunker certainly sounds like an Auxiliary Unit one, doesn't it? I don't believe that they would have been at all successful, certainly in any meaningful way, and I doubt if they the Aux Units would have lasted more than days or a week or two, once activated. Not least because they would have had to come out to find food very quickly (no freezers down there!!) and that would have made them very vulnerable. The claustrophobic conditions would have rapidly taken a toll, too. I suspect the Aux Units were expendable in Churchill's eyes, and no more than one of his well-known "useless gestures" (quoting Admiral Andrew Cunningham), more of a propaganda exercise than a real one.

[dutchman]

"but even if they exist it is understandable that they would not be made public" After 70 years I can't see the point in keeping such things secret.

Don't forget the Cold War Spuffler, there was still every chance of a Soviet invasion. The 23rd SAS Regiment (Territorials) were trained to fill a very similar role in this part of the country to the wartime Auxiliary Units.

One of my grandfathers claimed to have had success picking-off German paratroopers in Holland using a hunting rifle with *telescopic site in 1940, a weapon similar to those issued to Auxiliary Unit volunteers in Britain. My grandfather was German-born himself but incensed that German soldiers had invaded his adopted country. He refused to speak German ever again, on one occasion after the war even making Germans speak to him via an interpreter!

*I've only ever seen one picture of a sniper-rifle issued to Auxiliary Units, in the Observer colour magazine many years ago. It was very slim and elegant, nothing at all like standard Army-issue. I think it was an American deer-hunter's rifle and possibly even self-loading. (The Home Guard normally used American calibre rifle amunition).

Likewise, the so-called 'anti-personnel mines' were the kind used to hunt deer in the USA. They consisted of a xhotgun cartridge buried just below the surface triggered by a spring trap. it would have blown your heel off and slowed you down a lot but not done much else damage.

[Spuffler]

I doubt they had fitted with the Cold War thinking, simply because if the Soviets had invaded a nuclear war would have been certain - indeed, it's doubtful if they would have bothered invading, because all of the UK was targeted by Soviet multi-warhead ICBMs. As I remember from my college days, all it would have taken was 9 50 MTon bombs to virtually obliterate the UK - and it would not have been inhabitable for centuries afterwards. The flat countryside of the Midlands, East Anglia, and the South would have been particularly vulnerable.

Near the M25 in Essex there is a Cold War bunker http://www.secretnuclearbunker.com/, and it's on an entirely different scale and capability. It's disguised as a bungalow, and goes down a long way - several levels, in fact. There is another at Corsham, Wiltshire: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/content/articles/2005/12/14/burlington_nuclear_bunker_feature.shtml, again, a totally different principle.

These tiny ex-Aux Unit bunkers - judging by, I think it was a piece in Countryfile - were only intended for WWII use, and most were in woods and similar well-hidden locations.

I know that 'key people' in every community, usually JPs, doctors, etc., during the Cold War were picked to have the early warning system installed in their house (as I remember, it was codenamed WBF400, a special link to the local telephone exchange), and their task was to oversee local Civil Defence measures; they were supposed to take control autonomously, so as to maintain law and order AFTER a nuclear strike (!) as well as telling the community what to do and where to go during the 4 minute warning (!!!). They were supposed to get local officials and key workers together and into bunkers also during the 4 minute warning.... It's obvious that the whole Civil Defence thinking was flawed, and few people would have survived an actual nuclear strike.

[Spuffler]

A thought, dutchman! You mentioned the cavern under Owen Owen's store; do you mean the pre-war store, or the post war one? I think they weren't in the same location. My parents said that hte pre-war store nearly bankrupted them. When the foundations were dug, in '38 or '39, not far down the contractors hit sandstone not many feet down. They started to excavate the sandstone,and found it was only inches thick; underneath it was sand - for about a further 20 feet down. The whole store had to be supported on piles driven through the sand onto the next solid layer below. The cost and delay were enormous, and as I said, I was told that it almost bankrupted the business. And after all that, not many months later, and it was a burned out shell......

[dutchman]

A thought, dutchman! You mentioned the cavern under Owen Owen's store; do you mean the pre-war store, or the post war one?

Both!

The locations overlap partially and the basement of the old store was incorporated into the "lower basement" level of the new store. Much of it is under present-day Ironmonger Row and caused many problem with road subsidence in recent years.

This is the new store under construction showing the tunnel entrance from Palmer Lane:

[NeilsYard]

Wow - how do you access that and what was it for?