The Home Guard 

The Local Defence Volunteers were initiated on 14 May 1940, a time of possible Nazi invasion. Later Churchill insisted they be renamed the Home Guard. Recruits were aged 17-65, young men awaiting call-up, men in reserved occupations and the medically unfit. They were intended to observe, man road-blocks, and generally free troops to fight. Famously improvised and poor in equipment, by the time they were stood down after D-Day they were a much better equipped and stronger force. Later, the TV series Dad’s Army turned them into a legendary part of British life.

Archives staff can do things now that we couldn’t when we got the documents. Last week some time spent with a scanner was helpful, and the papers are now online in the Archives catalogue. They’re simple documents: a photograph, a signature and some personal details – year of birth and distinguishing marks, for instance.

The series is mainly of senior figures in the Home Guard, officers and platoon commanders. There are no young men, there is no Private Pike. World War One veterans aren’t so common in this group as might be thought. Men born in the early 1900s who couldn’t serve in that war formed one group of recruits, even though Britain called up men up to age 41. Shetland’s World War One was a war at sea, the Royal Naval Reserve recruiting heavily among proletarians. A number of those men were at sea in the Merchant Navy, 1939-45. There was a limited number of the middle class men the army traditionally recruited for leadership roles.

The head of Shetland’s Home Guard, Fetlar laird Colonel Sir Arthur Nicolson, was promoted from a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve Lieutenant in World War One. Major Edward Percival Adie M.C., had been a Lieutenant in a Canadian formation at that time. The merchant and antiquarian E.S. Reid Tait, a Lieutenant in Lerwick, had been an AB Gunner, RNVR. Interestingly, we have his exemption claim papers from the First World War in one of his mighty scrapbooks, D6/294/1. Edward Adie’s was wounded, and the Museum has his uniform, there’s a bloodstain on his kilt. Shrapnel came out of his body for years after the war, often helped by a hot bath.

A stark reminder of what being wounded in World War One could mean comes with the Home Guard ID credentials for James Robert Johnson, a platoon commander in the North Mainland. Visible Distinguishing Remarks – Egg shaped depression on top of skull caused by bullet wound. His army record (he was medically discharged) said A very gallant NCO of high character. He had continued to lead his section despite of being wounded. He had the Distinguished Conduct Medal -- the only higher award was a VC. James Robert was probably the Home Guard’s most highly decorated soldier.

Another source of senior figures were civilians employed by defence contractors in Shetland, often well qualified people. Alexander Duncan Lyon, RAF Camp, Sullom, born Dundee, is perhaps one. David Byres Cruickshank, who worked for W.J.R. Watson at Skaw, Unst, doesn’t leave much of a trail. Robert Bonsor Stewart Braid, born Kinross, 1911, does. He’d been in Shetland for a bit, and worked for the Road Surveyor. He ran the tar plant in the Scord Quarry. The late Jim Smith of Berry remembered him when he joined the Scalloway Home Guard as a young man. His ID has him working for Alexander Robertson Ltd., of Dunfermline. He is almost certainly the man of the same name, an ex-provost of Forres, who died in 1983 in Elgin. He had named his house Vaila.

There’s many a connection that can be made with these papers. Like R.B.S. Braid, some of these men lived a while after the war, and people will recall meeting them. There might, of course, be a few more documents like these stashed away. It would be nice to know, there’s the telephone, the post, the internet, or just bump into somebody.