Home Guard volunteers were more than just a Dad’s Army

This picture of the Southern Railway branch of the Local Defence Rifle Volunteers (LDV) sparked recognition from Joy Smith.

Mrs Smith, of Jordan Close, Park Wood, identified her father. Ernest Savage is in the front row, third from the left, wearing a cap. Born in 1898, he spent most of his working life as a guard on the railways, but had already seen his share of conflict. A soldier in the First World War, he had been wounded at the Somme, getting shrapnel from a shell in his left leg.

Thanks largely to the antics of Captain Mainwaring and the gang in the Dad’s Army sitcom, Britain’s Home Guard volunteers are nowadays largely regarded as a bit of a joke. That was certainly not the case then.

Just the week before this photo was taken, Mr Savage had been the guard on the trains bringing home the remnants of the defeated British Expeditionary Force, rescued from Dunkirk, up from Dover and Ramsgate through Kent.

With the Army in disarray and most of its equipment abandoned on the shores of France and with another 18 months to go before America entered the war, Mr Savage and his LDV colleagues were virtually the only thing between us and occupation by the Germans. Still not everyone was happy.

Mrs Smith remembered that her mum, Dolly Savage, was furious her father was obliged to take his rifle home with him. “Mum didn’t want guns in the house,” recalls Mrs Smith, “and insisted he locked it away every night in a cupboard.” Mr Savage died in 1970, aged 72.