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Are They the Forgotten Army?
The work of the Cadet forces in WW2. Also the ‘Z’ Batteries of the Home Guard. This is to mention the endeavours the ‘Z’ Batteries of the Home Guard, which is very often underestimated. Also the part which the ‘Army Cadet Force’ played.
The ‘Z’ Batteries at the time were a secret weapon, to deal with the mass air raids on major British cities. They were a series of massive rocket sites holding hundreds of these electronically operated weapons.
In the event of a large concentration of bombers they would be unleashed on major concentrations. They were not very accurate but the effect of hundreds of these weapons was designed to break up the main concentrations.
Although they were never used, due to the stopping of the air raids and the opening of the Normandy landings they would no doubt have had an effect on the German bombing.
There were three in Liverpool, one was in Sefton Park and my father, who served in the Field Artillery in WW1, belonged to this unit.
I joined the Bootle unit as a cadet and was a bombardier (infantry corporal).
The cadets trained for the War Certificate A, but also acted as messengers for the Home Guard unit and as fire watchers on the premises.
Some of the older cadets worked on the Radar units which were situated in the Bootle Sports Stadium.
Of theses I remember Dougie Hiorns who became a major in the Ghurkhas and Ken Cross who served as a mortar sergeant in the Lancashire Fusiliers.
There we many others, some served in the Commandos and Parachute Regiment, one was a sergeant in the Manchesters, one in the REME.
I joined the Kings Regiment and had the satisfaction as a recruit of four weeks taking thousands of prisoners, many members of Rommels Africa Corps. They were all over six foot tall and dwarfed us youngsters. We were issued with only five rounds, but told not to use them, in the event of trouble use the bayonet. Fortunately, they were thoroughly beaten and gave us no trouble.
In a time of shortages they had thousands of cigarettes and chocolates, having been in POW camps in Canada.
They were taken by train by members of the Border regiment to POW camps in Northern England.

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