I've been doing a bit of reading of late on the Home Guard. One problem I've encountered is nailing down the organisation of the Home Guard. Which is hardly unsurprising due to the differing nature of each platoon.
To give you a brief overview, it appears Home Guard were formed based on a geographical nature. For example all eligible males within an area form a single platoon. Of course this area changes from place to place, so Cities might have smaller area's due to population density, while a very rural area may have to limit its platoon size due to the difficulties in travelling. So organisational strength varies from area to area. Although the "ideal" squad is given as ten men.
Thus it seems organisation is very elastic. Equally, it also depends on how the local commander, and the resource's available to him. The Cambridge HG had a battalion that was motorised with vehicles from the local population.
Another unique feature of the Home Guard was the Sub Artillery, weapons like the Northover and Smith Gun. I'm trying to work out how these were dolled out to HG units. One presumes to avoid the risk of having one area with all your Anti-tank assets, and the rest of your Battalion area completely devoid of any that the sub-artillery would be handed out on a per platoon area. This would also mean you had enough infantry to fight any German Para's that drop in for tea. This is sort of re-enforced by the mention of many HG cross training all soldiers in the use of assorted sub-artillery.
However, one can not discount the concept of the Weapons platoon within the battalion, although I think this may well be a feature of the more densely populated areas. As we do have items like this:
Which show a sub-artillery platoon.
So does anyone have any knowledge on how everything was thrown together for the Home Guard, especially how the sub-artillery was issued? Or is it completely variable?
To give you a brief overview, it appears Home Guard were formed based on a geographical nature. For example all eligible males within an area form a single platoon. Of course this area changes from place to place, so Cities might have smaller area's due to population density, while a very rural area may have to limit its platoon size due to the difficulties in travelling. So organisational strength varies from area to area. Although the "ideal" squad is given as ten men.
Thus it seems organisation is very elastic. Equally, it also depends on how the local commander, and the resource's available to him. The Cambridge HG had a battalion that was motorised with vehicles from the local population.
Another unique feature of the Home Guard was the Sub Artillery, weapons like the Northover and Smith Gun. I'm trying to work out how these were dolled out to HG units. One presumes to avoid the risk of having one area with all your Anti-tank assets, and the rest of your Battalion area completely devoid of any that the sub-artillery would be handed out on a per platoon area. This would also mean you had enough infantry to fight any German Para's that drop in for tea. This is sort of re-enforced by the mention of many HG cross training all soldiers in the use of assorted sub-artillery.
However, one can not discount the concept of the Weapons platoon within the battalion, although I think this may well be a feature of the more densely populated areas. As we do have items like this:
Which show a sub-artillery platoon.
So does anyone have any knowledge on how everything was thrown together for the Home Guard, especially how the sub-artillery was issued? Or is it completely variable?
