THESE members of the Keighley Home Guard – in rather light-hearted mood – are occupying a wartime position which, judging by the spades, they have just built.
Formed originally as the Local Defence Volunteer Corps during the crucial early summer of 1940, they were primarily intended to combat what at the time was called “the Nazi parachute menace”, and were re-named the Home Guard that July.
Such was the pressure of their early days that a Yorkshire spokesman warned they could undergo “no large measure of drill, and there was no time for rifle practice”. Rifles being in short supply to begin with, this was a largely academic point.
Eventually, issued with rifles but no ammunition, some over-eager personnel had to be ordered to stop making themselves dummy rounds out of “wood shaped with a pencil sharpener”, which jammed and damaged the rifle mechanism.
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