Home Guard, Hounslow

Detailed and absorbing look at the training of a battalion of the Home Guard in Middlesex captured by a local amateur film-maker.

After a scene-setting introduction drawn from newsreel, this film uses amateur footage shot by Oliver Kimber, a printer, showing training with 2nd Battalion Middlesex Home Guard in Hounslow. The recruits are shown marching, bayonet fighting, wearing gas masks, on manoeuvres, firing mortars and dramatically engaging in mock street-fighting as they get to grip with life in the army. The Home Guard was formed in 1940 as a defence force featuring volunteer soldiers.