Interesting write up of Alan Duchy of Tradgardland’s recent Home Guard game complete with Home Guard Smith Gun amongst the atmospheric game photos:
http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2025/07/two-in-row.html
Blog post by Mark Man of TIN, 17 July 2025
Falkirk Home Guard sign – Duchy of Tradgardland’s Falkirk battlefield walk.
Interesting Battle of Falkirk WW2 panel on Alan ‘Duchy of Tradgardland’ Gruber’s blog about his Falkirk Battle Trail, posted 16 / 17 May 2025.
Thanks Alan, this set me off on a whole new Home Guard gaming LDV happy ‘rabbit-hole’.
Part of the Callendar Estate history trail that Alan followed featureed this interesting WW2 Home Guard sign – Image source / copyright: http://tradgardland.blogspot.com/2025/05/walking-falkirk-battlefield-trail.html
The text reads: “During the Second World War Callendar Estate allowed Falkirk Home Guard to use the land near Auchingean School as a training ground.”
“Here the volunteer soldiers learned their field craft – how to use natural cover to cross the landscape, crawl in the mud and use semi-artillery including the Northover Projector. This was manned by a four man crew and difficult to manoeuvre.”
“The platoons of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Stirlingshire Home Guard took it in turn to camp in the school buildings at weekends.”
Falkirk.gov.uk has an interesting photo of some of these men.
More on Falkirk Home Guard here (the 2008 book mentioned, Hard As Nails is sadly out of print or very expensive).
The Northover Projector (pictured above): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northover_Projector
Scenario or gaming ideas began to rise when I started to look up on maps “Auchingean Old School House” WW2 and noticed the “Westerglen transmitting station”.
This nearby facility was for longwave and mediumwave broadcasting established in 1932 at Westerglen Farm, 2 miles southwest of Falkirk.
According to Wikipedia “The medium-wave broadcast is strong enough to be heard as far south as Cornwall at certain times of the day, and in south-western Germany at night with good conditions.”
Sounds like a suitable target for air raid, parachute drop or Northern Scottish “Operation Sealion” – one to be protected by the Home Guard?
I have found some photos of inside Westerglen Transmitting Station and brief mention of it in wartime:
https://txfeatures.mb21.co.uk/insidewesterglen/index.shtml
Photos by Gilbert Pollock, BBC Westerglen 1941/42.
The text by Jim Pollock reads: “Fortunately, Westerglen was never considered to be a strategic target during the War (assuming it could be found by German bombers) although I do recall Dad mentioning that one night when he was not on duty, a bomber dropped a stick of bombs nearby.”
“However, I do remember him saying that just before raids were expected they sometimes received orders to shut down the transmitter in case it was being used by the Germans for location finding purposes. He said the BBC would regularly shut down one transmitter and switch on another on the same frequency and at a different location, to confuse the enemy. Glasgow and the Clyde shipyards were far more attractive as targets.”
“All of these photos were taken by Gilbert Pollock during his time at BBC Westerglen. I suspect that most of them date from about late 1940 to 1942.” Text source by Jim Pollock
A typical 1930s building outside housing all the (diesel fuelled?) generator equipment is shown clearly another nearby 1931 site Moorside Edge: http://tx.mb21.co.uk/gallery/gallerypage.php?txid=1465&pageid=139
Other terrain features?
Auchingean wood being a conifer plantation looks on the map to be pre-war?
Auchingean Wood is a woodland area that includes conifer plantations and is part of Callendar Estate.
“The Auchingean woodland features a Woodland Bird Trail, which offers scenic views over the Ochil Hills and leads through Howierigg Moss, an important lowland raised bog” – or in gaming terms marshy difficult terrain?
Further OS (copyright maps) can be found here:
https://streets.falkirk.gov.uk/UPRN/136004353
An example of the fantastic detail this c.1940s map could show if you were modelling terrain on the tabletop. Regular Army and Home Guard units could be assumed to have had such maps for planning training exercises.
Another example of available mapping for tabletop gaming id the National Library of Scotland mapping archive for an individual spot. You can order physical or digital copies of maps going back hundreds of years, including aerial photographs.
A 1950 post war aerial photo of the area can also be found on this NLS National Library of Scotland website.
https://maps.nls.uk/view/75221378
With some imagination this aerial photo could be a Luftwaffe invasion map …
The 1932 transmission radio station is not so obvious from the map but would be much more obvious from German Youth Hikers or cyclists travelling the area on espionage duties before the war.
Home Guard Auxiliary Unit OB Training Exercise
Part of the ‘Stay Behinds’ Auxiliary Units of the Home Guard was to test out the defences of the local Home Guard, Regular Army and strategic infrastructure guards such as airfields. They would sneak in and leave a note to the CO to say they had evaded the guard and blown up or removed the target asset. (Note: probably says Boom!)
The FOI official answer he received directed him to National Archives WO199 where I found a range of intriguing files, sadly most of them not digitised:
These auxiliary or special Home Guard units were active all over Britain including Scotland are documented on the CART website, although I can find no record of Falkirk or Auchingean Auxilairy units, OBs or patrols.
This doesn’t mean the Falkirk based Auxiliary Units didn’t exist, just not recorded.
Melville House Fifeshire was the local training area for Home Guard and Auxiliary Units. https://www.staybehinds.com/location/melville-house-fifeshire
Similar role played by this Kinnaird House here:
Auxiliary Units were set up in Scotland by Captain Eustace Maxwell, the brother of SOE trainer and ‘Ring of Bright Water’ novelist and naturalist Gavin Maxwell:
https://www.staybehinds.com/eustace-maxwell
Recce the terrain
One of family in law’s wartime service maxims is : “Time spent in Reconnaissance is seldom Wasted“
Good old Google Map Street View allows you to ‘recce’ the terrain as it is today.
Here is the Old Auchingean School House on Google Map / Streetview, now obviously a private house with modern additions:
The school house had a good view of the Westerglen Radio Transmitter opposite:
Finally the Polish angle – don’t forget the Poles in Scotland during WW2!
East Lothian At War – http://eastlothianatwar.co.uk/Polish%20Army%20in%20East%20Lothian.html
And Alan’s local town of Dunfermline in WW2 with the Defend Fife WW2 events
Polish defence maps of Central Dunfermline
Need some free rules and figures as gaming counters?
Look at our blogpost here:
BPS or Blog Post Script
Which Auchingean and what’s in a name?
There is an interesting “Threadinbirgh” blog post about Auchingean’s name variations, both the Edinburgh and the Falkirk areas which are so named:
Para-Shots Counters or Figures redesigned in ‘hand drawn style’ by AI from my hand-drawn designs
The weird irony … I asked Chat GPT to redesign my hand drawn, hand coloured game tokens for my ‘wargame in a matchbox’ challenge.
I tasked Chat GPT to “Design me some some gaming counters for my Para-Shots Home Guard Training game like those I have attached as photos, showing army figures from WW2 as seen from above.”
Further specific instructions: “Grey uniformed and helmeted German paratroops with rifles and khaki green British Infantry in steel helmets with rifles. Officers with pistol. Include grenade blast explosion counters. Each counter the size of a twopenny piece.”
Feel free to use these handmade (hamdmAIde?) counter designs in your game designs if they are of any help.
Read and see more at my blog post, Crossposted from my fully colour illustrated Man of TIN Blog Two post, where you can find this section at the end as a B.P.S or Blog Post Script:
Blog post by Mark Man of TIN, 17 May 2025
Shed Wars Excellent Dad’s Army Home Guard – Sealion wargame 1940
Well worth a visit, beautifully set out game and terrain 28mm from Shed Wars:
http://shedwars.blogspot.com/2025/04/dont-panic-trouble-in-walmington-on-sea.html
Para- Shots Home Guard Training ‘War Game in a Matchbox’ Revisited
Simple home-made, hand-drawn graphic counters of a LDV or Home Guard rifle squad or patrol – as seen from above.
Revisiting my Para-Shots Home Guard Training Games – ‘War Game in a Matchbox’ challenge:
The original or first Para-Shots post and ‘wargame in a matchbox’ challenge:
Playtesting Battle Report to follow …
Blog cross posted by Mark Man of TIN, 16 April 2025
The Home Guard “fight for every inch of the ground in every village and every street”
So said Winston Churchill on 11 / 12 September 1940, a few days away from the peak of the Battle of Britain and the threat of invasion after Dunkirk.
“Besides this, we have more than a million and a half men of the Home Guard, who are just as much soldiers of the Regular Army as the Grenadier Guards, and who are determined to fight for every inch of the ground in every village and in every street.”
https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/every-man-to-his-post.html
This was reprinted in my copy of Home Guard for Victory by Hugh Slater, late of the International Brigade in Spain.
It also explains who the ‘Para- Shots’ were.
Gaming the Home Guard and its training exercises is literally at tiny scale “to fight for every inch of the ground in every village and in every street.”
I shall introduce more of this out of print manual in future posts.
Blog post by Man Of TIN blog, 5 February 2025
Roland Penrose Surrealist Camouflage Expert in The Home Guard
One for the bookshelf …
It is useless in warfare to be merely brave, if bravery means presenting oneself as a useless target to the enemy. It is far better to employ intelligence and concealment, so as to induce him to present a target.
A man who is well concealed can bide his time, watch for the enemy to expose himself and hold his fire until his target is sufficiently close to make sure of it.
In this way the Home Guard may be able to destroy the invader without even allowing him the chance to hit back. By good concealment it will greatly augment its value as a fighting force. Camouflage is no mystery and no joke. It is a matter of life and death-of victory or defeat.”
Roland Penrose
In place of a full book review, to give you an idea of the visual riches in this book, original or reprint, here are a few diagrams from the Penrose book, thanks to a few photos from Compass Books’ recent sale of a 1942 original:
“As a Quaker, Penrose had been a pacifist, but after the outbreak of World War II he volunteered as an air raid warden and then taught military camouflage at the Home Guard training centre at Osterley Park. This led to Penrose’s commission as a captain in the Royal Engineers.
He worked as senior lecturer at the Eastern Command Camouflage School in Norwich, and at the Camouflage Development and Training Centre at Farnham Castle, Surrey. During his lectures, he used to startle his audiences by inserting a colour photograph of his partner Lee Miller, lying on a lawn naked but for a camouflage net; when challenged, he argued “if camouflage can hide Lee’s charms, it can hide anything”.
[This photograph of Lee Miller is reproduced in Peter Forbes’ book – see below].
Peter Forbes (Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage. Yale, 2009) suggests this was a surrealist technique being put into service. His lectures were respected by both trainees and colleagues.
In 1941 Penrose wrote the Home Guard Manual of Camouflage, which provided accurate guidance on the use of texture, not only colour, especially for protection from aerial photography, which was monochrome at that time.
Penrose applied for a job at the Foreign Office, but was turned down because of a perceived security risk, possibly relating to the investigation of Lee Miller by MI5.” –Source: Text via Tate website / Wikipedia
Lee Miller, Penrose’s American wife, became a war correspondent, a story retold in the recent film with Kate Winslet.
I had the pleasure of briefly meeting their son Antony Penrose at a talk twenty odd years ago about both his parents’ art and his growing up at Farleys House amidst many famous surrealist artist visitors.
During the Second World War, Cott worked as a camouflage expert for the British Army and helped to influence War Office policy on camouflage. His book Adaptive Coloration in Animals (1940), popular among serving soldiers, was the major textbook on camouflage in zoology of the twentieth century … (Wikipedia source).
Various books on camouflage including the excellent full colour Brassey’s Book of Camouflage mention the employment of well known artists from France, America and Britain WW1 as camofleurs.
Less is usually said about Germany or their allies employing artists like Franz Marc as camofleurs in this way.
http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2021/09/franz-marc-as-wwi-german-artillery.html
As well as artists, zoologists and naturalists such as Hugh Cott were also employed alongside film and stage designers, special effects people and magicians like Jasper Maskelyane to misdirect bombing raids and misinform the enemy about troop build ups.
Hugh Bamford Cott, (6 July 1900 – 18 April 1987), was a British zoologist, an authority on both natural and military camouflage, and a scientific illustrator and photographer. Many of his field studies took place in Africa, where he was especially interested in the Nile crocodile, the evolution of pattern and colour in animals.
And the lovely Camoupedia website.
http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2021/12/zoologist-hugh-b-cott-and-wwii.html
Penrose and Cott are remembered in the recent Pencott design by Hyde Definition.
http://camoupedia.blogspot.com/2010/02/hyde-definition-and-pencott.html
2019 Post Man of TIN blog on Peter Laing 15mm and Airfix 54mm German Paratroops
This post was around on My Man of TIN blog before I started this my Look Duck and Varnish gaming the Home Guard blog:
https://manoftinblog.wordpress.com/2019/03/24/peter-laing-15mm-and-airfix-54mm-german-paratroops/
Shamefully, quite a few of these Laing WW2 Germans and British Infantry with rifles (masquerading as Fallschirmjager and LDV Home Guard) are still on the painting tray five years later,
almost making it into the Para- Shots wargame in a matchbox in place of paper troop counters,
although thirty five years is my record for unfinished Laings.
and well over thirty years for Airfix WW2 German infantry version 1:
And not forgetting the Peter Laing 15mm WW2 range endorsed by Featherstone in Wargaming Airborne Operations:
The range never grew that big but is stylish, especially enhanced with WW1 figures:
https://collectingpeterlaing15mmfigures.wordpress.com/peter-laing-ww2/
Blog finally posted on 7 / 8 January 2024 by Mark Man of TIN
Home Guard Training Manuals online
A number of Home Guard manuals, original or reprint are available at archive.org the Internet Archive (part of the Wayback Machine) along with recent general and local histories of the Home Guard.
You will need to sign up for a free Archive.org account to access many of these titles which can be borrowed and renewed by the hour.
Home Guard Warfare 1941 by John Langdon-Davies
https://archive.org/details/homeguardwarfare0000john/page/n7/mode/2up
Interesting the first page naming the recent and ongoing war in Finland (Russo Finnish War) as well as the Spanish Civil War as part of their knowledge of modern war.
Another title by social historian Penny Summerfield on men and women’s roles in the Home Guard.
https://archive.org/details/contestinghomede0000summ/page/n5/mode/2up
Which has this vintage uniform image inside front cover
Like a more deadly version of the Scouting for Boys handbook.
*
Hare Joins the Home Guard 1941 Alison Uttley
https://littlegreyrabbitscholar.com/2019/06/10/hare-joins-the-home-guard/
https://archive.org/details/homeguardmanual10000unse/page/n3/mode/2up
Norman Longmate, WW2 historian and former Home Guard private
Exercises for indoor training – sounds interesting for tabletop gaming the Home Guard.
Para-Shots my faux 1940s Home Guard Training Game in a Matchbox
My entry to the ‘Wargame in A Matchbox’ challenge December 2024 in the form of Para-Shots, my faux retro 1940s Home Guard training game – in a small matchbox.
The sort of thing you’d find in here …
Blog posted by Mark Man of TIN in the closing hours of 31 December 2024.
Look Duck and Varnish 