THE GREAT WAR | HOME DEFENCE FORCE
Pete London profiles William Grenfell’s Volunteer Training Corps, Britain’s little-known Great War ‘Home Guard’.
Not since the final Jacobite rising of the mid-1700s had Britain seen major conflict on home turf. But the Great War was not going to be fought just on foreign fields – and that brought new terrors to the home population: fears of hunger, bombardment, air raids. Even invasion was feared. Never before had the sheer scale of warfare been seen; in August 1914, Secretary of War Lord Kitchener’s call-to-arms yielded astonishing numbers of men for the armed forces. A widespread collective sense of duty to King and Empire saw countless families say goodbye to fathers and sons; by the end of the year well over a million people had stepped forward.
Civilians rallied, too. Across Britain, in drawing rooms and village halls, meetings organised collections of useful items for soldiers and sailors: socks, mittens, chocolate, tobacco, bandages. Hosts of committees and groups appeared, formed chiefly by women, older men and the church, to support the services. First-aid and nursing classes began, while the British Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance societies girded themse…
