In March, Redline Home Guard spent an enjoyable evening with the 1st Goring Heath Scouts at Crays Pond Scout Hut, sharing the story of the Home Guard and Britain’s wartime Stop Line defences.
The evening began with a presentation covering the formation of the Home Guard, originally the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), and the important role the Thames Stop Line played during the Second World War. Using a PowerPoint presentation alongside original wartime footage of Home Guard training exercises, we explored how ordinary men from local towns and villages prepared to defend their communities in the event of invasion, often with limited equipment in the early days of the war.
Following the presentation, the Scouts were able to move around a series of themed display tables and hands-on learning stations, each covering a different aspect of Home Guard service.
The first station focused on the early days of the LDV, before uniforms and standard weapons became widely available. One of our members portrayed an early volunteer in period civilian clothing, alongside a display of the sort of privately owned weapons many early volunteers brought with them, including hunting rifles and shotguns.
The next table showcased wartime communications equipment, featuring an excellent display of field radios, Morse code equipment and signal lamps. Scouts were able to learn how messages were passed between units and how vital communication was to Britain’s defence network.
Another station focused on wartime explosives and bomb disposal. This included examples of German ordnance such as the 50kg SC bomb, SD2 “Butterfly Bomb” and incendiary devices, alongside British grenades and anti-tank mines. The display helped explain both the threat posed by German bombing and the measures taken to defend against invasion.
The final table featured some of the best-known Home Guard weapons of the war, including the P14/P17 rifles, SMLE rifle, Sten gun, Thompson submachine gun and Bren gun. As always, this proved especially popular, with Scouts keen to learn how the equipment worked and how it would have been used by the Home Guard.
The enthusiasm throughout the evening was fantastic to see. Several Scouts were still asking questions and handling equipment even after parents had arrived for collection, which is always a good sign that the evening has captured people’s interest.
We would like to thank the 1st Goring Heath Scouts for inviting us along and making us so welcome, we had a great evening.
Crays Pond Scout Hut continues to be an excellent venue for our training evenings and educational events, and it was great to once again put it to good use.
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