- Whispers From Walmington Forum -

Dave Homewood · Posted: Thu 04 Dec 2008 06:33 am Post subject: My Home Guard book online

Back in about 1997 I began researching the Home Guard in my hometown of Cambridge.

That's right, New Zealand also had a Home Guard in WWII, and in fact it was very large and active considering the population of NZ. The Home Guard was officially set up in October 1940 and officially recognised as a branch of the Army in February 1941. However Cambridge had set up it's own citizen's army for the defence of the town and district before that time,in July 1940.

The reason i looked into the Cambridge HG initially was just to find out whether my grandfatehr, Ian Fitness, had served in the HG in WWII. He was a farmer (essential industry) and had two kids, plus a hernia and flat feet so wasn't in the regular army. Mum had said he was in the HG but Nana reckoned he wasn't, so I set to work to establish the facts. I discovered Mum was right, he was in the HG. I even met one of his fellow platoon members.

But Cambridge didn't have just a platoon, it had a full battallion! Amazing for a town and district of just 5000 people, considering hundreds of them were overseas or in the Armed Forces at home, and many others were women and kids.

Anyway I have slowly been piecing the story together ever since but I came to the conclusion a long while ago that publishing it as a book is not an option. it might sell 20 copies locally and that's it, so too much cost involved. So instead it is now becoming part of my ever-expanding website (which is mainly devoted to people from my town who served in the Air Forces in WWII and beyond, with other areas too like general RNZAF history; a Dad's Army section and an aerobatics team section).

The new Home Guard section which will continue to grow as time allows is to be found here:
http://www.cambridgeairforce.org.nz/HG_Index.html

I found it a fascinating story of the unit coming togetehr and the trainign they went through, the struggles with finding weapons and the costs involved and working out who was going to pay for it.

Thought it's a serious history of the unit, there are also a lot of parallels in there to the TV series Dad's Army I reckon. It just goes to show that even 12,000 miles away from Britain my town was also under threat - first from the Germans whose navy were in our waters sinking ships and causing fear, and there was a genuine concern of invasion by them to try to strangle Britain by cutting off the food, wool and toher goods we supplied. Then a greater threat came form Japan of course, who actually did intend to invade NZ.

Please have a read of what is up there so far. I'd very much enjoy any feedback and suggestions. Those of you who actually have an interest in the Home Guard will I'm sure find it interesting - especially to compare to the UK HG.

I intend to soon put up a few maps so you can get your bearings, and though four chapters are currently online, more will appear very soon. These four chapters cover July 1940 - June 1941, the first year of the Cambridge HG.

Thanks for looking.