大象传媒

Message 1 - Home Guard . Omagh . County Tyrone

Posted on: 09 November 2003 by Raffaele

My Dad,Jack Rossi, joined the local Ulster Home Guard in Omagh Co. Tyrone during the War. If the accomodation we lived in was still standing , there would still be a big oil stain on the wallpaper where the huge .303 rifle rested. Dad used to regail us with stories from the training sessions like when one of his colleagues asked him when they would get real live ammunition instead of blanks. When Dad told him that the bullets they were using were live , the wee man turned pale and admitted that he had been firing at a sergeant on a distant hill for five minutes.
During Grenade throwing practice , one member tried so hard that the primed weapon flew out of his hand backwards dropping into a trench occupied by the Commanding Officer and others. Our local grocer threw himself between the C.O. and the Grenade and managed to hurl it out into open ground where it exploded safely.
After several such stories my Mum said thoughtfully "if the Germans ever do invade us , we will be in more danger from the Home Guard than from the enemy!

Message 1 - Home Guard

Posted on: 10 November 2003 by David Hall

I was only 13 when the LDV was formed. Later it became the Home Guard. As the threat of invasion became greater after the fall of France the South of England was in a state of high alert.
I was an evacuee living in Ardingly, Sussex. As my foster father, Mr C, had fought in WW1 in the Machine Gun Corps on the Somme he had the honour of becoming the Ardingly Home Guard's Machine Gun Instructor. Along with a collection of 1914 vintage Lee-Enfield rifles the unit was the proud possessor of a 0.5 Browing machine gun complete with 2 clips of dummy ammunition and, I think, only one clip of live ammo!
This fearsome weapon was often brought back home by Mr C.It would then be taken to pieces and carefully cleaned and oiled.Mr C let Rafe,His eldest son aged 12,and myself ,then just 13 have a go at doing this. We became so proficient at stripping it down, using a dummy round as an ejection tool that we became the fastest in the village! I think that our record time for stripping it down was 12 seconds.
We also got invloved in other warlike things. Two or three boxes of WW1 hand grenades were delivered to the local Home Guard Headquarters at Hapstead House in the village. These had been in store since 1918 according to the labels on the boxes. Before they could be used they had to be cleaned. They had been coated in thick grease and wrapped in brown paper before being packed in strong wooden boxes. One Sunday mormning a working party of Mr C,Rafe, the unit Quartmaster and myself met at the stable block of Hapstead House. The boxes of grenades were taken up into the hayloft; the door was opened onto the stable yard; the grenades were unpacked. After peeling off the brown paper we then scraped off the bulk of the grease. By this time they were recognisable as hand grenades. We then had to unscrew the fuse plug to check that they had not been primed with fuses. With one's greasy hand holding the fuse lever in position, the pin could then be pulled out after holding the grenade base down onto the floor. On releasing one's grip on the lever the firing pin was also released with a thump onto the floor of the hayloft. After this part of the operation the remainder of the grease was cleaned off in a tin of paraffin.
The whole idea of doing this in the hayloft was for safety reasons. If anyone forgot to unscrew the fuse plug before pulling the pin, then they should throw the grenade straight out of the open door where, hopefully, if the grenade were "live" it could explode in the yard and not injure us in the loft! That waw the theory- fortunately we never had to put it to the test! All the grenades were safely cleaned and stored away for possible use against the enemy who luckily for us never made it to our shores.

Message 1 - Poppy Day

Posted on: 11 November 2003 by cordibaz

Dear sir,
The following is a poem I wrote as a tribute to those who fell in the first world war:

POPPY DAY
By Barrie Cordingley

Would you like to buy a poppy dear,
I heard the vendor say,
As I wandered round the shops,
on that cold November day,
Come on, buy a poppy love,
remember those that fell,
While fighting for our freedom,
on the battlefields of hell,
In the trenches of the Somme,Ypres and Verdun,
Many thousands lost their lives in the war against the Hun,
It`s not a lot to ask, for the price they had to pay,
So please, please buy a poppy love, remember them today.

Would you care to buy a poppy love, the vendor asked again,
As she huddled in a doorway, and sheltered from the rain,
Come on, buy a poppy love, you`ll feel better if you do,
Show them you appreciate, what they sacrificed for you,
So I made a small donation, then continued on my way,
But before I went to sleep that night,
I closed my eyes to pray,
God bless all those brave young men, whose was not to reason why,
But just to do their duty, but just to do or die,
So next time your life seems perfect,
and one long round of fun,
Remember the young men that died on the Somme, Ypres and Verdun.