Sunday 24 May 2015

Dads Army and Children's Hour

We turned the TV over in time to catch the last part of one of the very first Dads Army programmes in black and white. It was when they were waiting for uniforms and only had arm bands to show who they were. They were practicing their drill with broom handles and longing to have real riffles. Just near the end they played a voice over of the Children's Hour presenter saying
"Good night children, everywhere".

I was back in our house, a child of about 7, sat on the floor listening to a large wooden Pye radio with a fretwork front of a sunrise. The surrounding room was in gloom with curtains shut early for the blackout regulations, electric light bulbs that never gave out much light and dancing flames from a small fire. The walls were papered in pattern of close dark brown autumn leaves which only added to the atmosphere. For a moment I was safe, I had listened to the stories and songs, the night's bombing hadn't started, I'd had a nice tea and father wasn't home yet to chase me off to bed. He came from a generation of children being seen and not heard. More often with him it was both.

But Dad is my connection to the TV Dads Army for he was a member for a while of The Home Guard as it came to be known. Dad had fallen between two stools, too young to fight in WWI and too old for WWII. He tried to join the navy but after an accident on his motor bike - literally on the day war broke out - but they refused him. So he worked in factories as an engineering inspector and joined the local Home Guard. He had a uniform and I have a photo of him somewhere, but his platoon had only one riffle between them and as he said, nothing up the spout.

The platoon patrolled a hill on the outskirts of town where a cathedral was going to be built. Only the foundations and the crypt had been built and this was where they met. In turns they went out to patrol the hill passing on the useless riffle to each other.

Many years later dad recounted this to me but with a chilling addition. Just after the war they published the master plan of the Germans to invade Britain called Operation Sea Lion. Dad said the hairs on the back of his neck stood up when he read that the plan included a Parachute Regiment being dropped exactly on the hill he guarded with one riffle and no bullets.

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