Home Guards Again

In Britain's darkest hour after Dunkirk, Winston Churchill called on his countrymen to defend their island home by joining an unpaid citizens' militia, which he christened the Home Guard. Nearly 2,000,000 Britons stepped forward. Armed at first with pitchforks, pikes and shotguns, they guarded Britain's coasts until the fear of invasion passed. When the Home Guard stood down in 1944, it was a tough, well-drilled fighting force, bristling with Tommy guns, dagger bayonets and U.S. .300-cal. rifles.

Prime Minister Churchill, who likes to be prepared, asked the House of Commons to re-establish the Home Guard. His reasoning: as the U.S. Air Force's principal overseas atom-bomber base, Britain might one day be the target of massive Russian paratroop attacks. Churchill's government proposed to recruit 125,000 unpaid, part-time volunteers as the nucleus of a force which could be expanded in wartime to 900,000 men. Their duties: to protect arms factories, airfields and fuel plants against saboteurs and parachutists. Each man would be issued a steel helmet and either a rifle or Sten gun, but, unlike the World War II Home Guard, the new outfit would wear no uniforms--yet. Last week Churchill's bill passed its second reading in the House of Commons without opposition.

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