LDV/Home Guard in Coventry

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

There's what looks like a prefab garage in Palmer Lane which is actually the entrance to an underground tunnel. Officially it was just a storage area for Owen-Owen. This map shows the relative positions of the tunnel, old store basement and new store:


Click image to reveal full-size

This is from memory so may not be 100% accurate but I once read a cutting from a wartime edition of the Coventry Evening Telegraph in which a Bevin Boy* was charged with being late for his shift down the local mine. His excuse was that he'd been guarding the mine every night after his shift ended and this had caused him to oversleep the following morning. The magistrate fined him forty shillings which was probably about a months pay. It could have been much worse, he could have been jailed!

*Bevin Boys were conscripts who were forced to work down the mines instead of doing army service. They were named after the then Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin.

Was also reading the weapons inventory of a typical Home Guard battalion. They had on average only one light machine gun per platoon, one medium machine gun per company and so on, all non-standard. This was about a quarter of the inventory of a regular army unit and woefully inadequate. The logic may have been that the War Ministry was reluctant to provide the Home Guard with weapons that could easily be used by an invading German army if captured. Towards the end of the war the Home Guard began receiving large numbers of Sten Guns (which could fire German-made ammunition) but by that time the chances of an invasion had totally receded.

Thanks for the photo - very interesting, dutchman! It looks like an air raid shelter - maybe as a refuge from a gas attack. Incidentally, I remember thta most casualties in Coventry were those who took refuge in the Market Hall cellars.

It's noteworthy that the Germans had far more air raid casualties than need have been because they didn't build many air raid shelters for the public (unlike for Party officials!) Part of the reason was the much more common practice of having cellars and underground garages. In Dresden, a lot of people were killed due to toxic gases and fumes, where they had taken refuge in the cellars of the baroque houses; the cellars were connected house to house, so when fumes entered one end, they couldn't be escaped, and often the fumes entered the other end, too. Many house interiors collapsed onto the cellars, closing access to them, with the result that people who may have survived the fumes and the fires died of asphyxiation. The cavern under Owen Owen would have given protection from mustard gas, though, and that was what our authorities expected. The snag is, the Germans had SARIN and TABUN; the only reason Hitler didn't authorise their use was that he was convinced that we had them too, and would retailate with them! If SARIN had been used, we would have suffered millions of civilian deaths.

Re the HG weapons: one of my uncles was in the HG, and they were all taught to use a Sten. I remember him telling the story of them being in a line up on the range, all told to fire a short burst, and one guy had his Sten keep firing; of course, he was daft enough to turn round as the magazine emptied, accompanied by dozens of people hitting the dirt in a flash!! (I bet he was on a charge!!! ) HG rifles were largely obsolete, too. Old (WWI) pattern Lee-Enfields and Ross-Enfields; they were effective, so long as you didn't expect to hit anything! My brother in his National Service had to use a Ross-Enfield; he said that his score was 39% - and that's with static targets on a range. (A comparison: when I was a pistol shooter, I achieved about 92%, with a Browning - not a wonderfully accurate pistol) I think it was probably wise that the HG didn't have modern weapons - they might have killed someone (but probably not the enemy!! ); they would have probably helped keep heads down for a bit, to buy time for the army to arrive.

Your Bevin Boy got off lightly! In Stalin's Russia, being 20 minutes late for work resulted in a 12 month jail sentence.

Having said what I did above about the cavern, a thought: - I wonder if its purpose may have been to inspect the foundations of the pre-war store, given the problem with building it; it would have allowed engineers to monitor any subsidence. Could well be!

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).

And here it is I think!


Johnson M1941 self-loading rifle

I could be mistaken though? It could have been a standard-issue Home Guard M1917 rifle but fitted with telescopic sight. It's around 40 years since I saw the Observer Magazine photo!

I like the photo - thanks!! I wouldn't have judged it to be a sniper rifle for two reasons:
1. the ventilated grip - that means rapid fire and a lot of it! Sniper rifles generally aren't for rapid or sustained fire, because as the barrel heats up, it droops slightly, and the aim goes off, and
2. too short barrel for a serious sniper(but were the HG/LDV serious snipers? Probably not!!)

It looks more like a carbine to me.

Now I've had a look, and this view is vindicated: http://world.guns.ru/rifle/autoloading-rifles/usa/m1941-johnson-e.html. Not the sort of thing that the Home Guard would have used, because of its complexity and easily lost bits, but if you look at the article in the link, not bad for paratroops.

The Home Guard were issued with 1914 Ross rifles (as I said), Pattern 1914 Enfields, and M1917s, which were US modified Enfields.

The Auxiliary Units, like SOE, were issued with silenced Stens, Plastic explosives, 'commando' knives, and booby trap and other sabotage devices. Since SOE were also issued with small-calibre self-loading pistols, it is logical that so were the AUs. The intention was stealth and murder and sabotage, not duties that properly trained soldiers would carry out, like sniping - i.e. hit and run dirty tricks.