The Real Dad's Army: The Story of the Home Guard

A history of the Home Guard from its creation in May 1940 to the end of the Second World War written by Home Guard Veteran Private Longmate, then aged 17, the same age as Pike! ‘Just how close the TV was to reality is amply demonstrated in Longmate’s affectionate tribute to the real Dad''s Army’ ‘No one like Norman Longmate manages to convey with such verve and authority many of the most intriguing aspects of the Home Front’ The enduring popularity of the BBC TV series Dad’s Army has focused attention on one of the strangest and least military armies ever formed – the British Home Guard. What started as an improvised band of volunteers had grown by 1942 into a conscripted, disciplined and well-equipped force with a strength of nearly two million men. Norman Longmate, himself a Home Guard veteran and an authority on wartime Britain, has collected together a wealth of hilarious anecdotes as well as all the unlikely facts to produce the first popular history of the Home Guard to be written since the war. Longmate, ex-Private ‘F’ Company, 3rd Sussex Battalion, Home Guard, joined ‘Dad’s Army’ at the same age as the fictional character ‘Pike’, and to this day he contends that the much-loved sitcom was remarkably accurate in its portrayal of life in the Home Guard.

• | Author: Norman Longmate
• | Publisher: Amberley Publishing
• | Publication Date: Jan 15, 2016
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781445654034
• | ISBN-10: 1445654032