Home Guard Middlesex 13th Battalion, 'B' Company, Training Exercises / Home Guard 'B' Cup
16mm film Colour Silent 10.1943 13:07
Summary: Uniformed and armed home guard men move through an Assault Course and fire at an imagined enemy, followed by their participation in military exercises.
Title number: 349
LSA ID: LSA/446
Description: The exercises include taking a prisoner, moving over and along a road, and using a field radio transmitter. Other guardsmen, local children and Red Cross nurses watch proceedings from the sidelines. There are also tactical exercises in 'enemy territory' around a canal (which is frozen over), with the men crossing a canal bridge by lock gates. Men show the use of personal camouflage for concealment crawling through some undergrowth with blacked up faces. The training continues on a rifle range in a quarry and at a 'First Aid and Casualty clearing station' where those acting wounded are assisted to a field hospital, where Red cross nurses assist. The film ends with the guardsmen and Red Cross nurses taking sustenance at a field kitchen.
Credits: Director: Twinn
Further information: The filmmaker B.L. Twinn, was a Corporal in the 13th Middlesex Signals Unit. Credits inform that the film was made 'By permission of Lieut. Colonel C.W. Norman, o/c 13th Btn.; Major R.A. Loader o/c 'B' Coy.' At six monthly intervals, platoons competed for a challenge cup, known as the Bee Cup. B Company had its own assault course designed and constructed by its own personnel. According to Bill Craig in the Harrow Museum Newsletter (Spring 1999), the home guard training weekends took place at Hedley Park.
Keywords: Second World War (1939-1945)
Locations: United Kingdom; England; London; Harrow; Pinner
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