Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2008 | Page 55
THE ISLAND AT WAR 1939 - 1945
should the occasion arise.”
Fred Hollis was in farming,
a reserved occupation, and
registered for the LDV on
his eighteenth birthday. Mr
Cheverton was the Officer
Commanding and a high
percentage of the men in the
Brighstone unit had served in
World War One. Fred wore
overalls with a number sewn
on his jacket and guarded the
telephone exchange in the
village from 10 pm to 4 am. “I
thought it was daft finishing
then,” says Fred who went
home to milk the cows at 5 am.
“What would have happened
if the Germans had come after
four o’clock?”
After the evacuation of the
BEF from Dunkirk in the
summer of 1940,
re-equipping the Army with
weapons and uniforms had to
take precedence over the LDV.
The Directors of Saunders-Roe
Limited at Cowes had made
a concerted effort to get as
many men as possible to join
the “Saro V.P. Unit” attached
to the East Wight (Nunwell)
Home Guard Battalion. By
the end of May, 141 men had
enlisted, mostly from the
aircraft factory and the local
shipyards and by 31 July there
were 499 names on the roll.
The Directors were then faced
with the problem of finding
arms.
Saunders-Roe purchased
12-bore guns and sporting
rifles but with only a few
rounds of ammunition
available for each weapon,
none could be ‘wasted’
in practice firing on the
ranges. A Bren gun was
acquired by ‘devious means’
and in July the Ministry of
Aircraft Production who were
responsible for the factory,
sent four Vickers machine
guns, relics from the last war,
along with 50 Ross rifles
complete with bayonets.
Later the unit received 6
Lewis automatic weapons
for anti-aircraft defence with
3,600 rounds of ammunition
and two Beverettes (armoured
cars fitted with Browning
Automatic Rifles). A factory
bomb squad was formed to
help the Royal Engineers deal
with unexploded bombs and in
May 1942 they dealt with a 500
kilo bomb on their own.
So far the LDV’s role in
defending the country hadn’t
been established though most
of the men who had joined
up saw it as a fighting force
and not as an armed special
life
constabulary with the motto,
‘Look, Duck, and Vanish’.
Finally, in June the War Office
issued its first real order to the
LDV:
‘The Local Defence
Volunteers are neither
trained nor equipped to
offer strong prolonged
resistance to highly trained
German troops and they will
therefore best fulfil their
role by observation, by rapid
transmission of information,
and by confirming the enemy’s
activities. They will also act as
guards at places of tactical or
industrial importance.’
Working on a farm, Bill
Brett was also in a reserved
occupation and like his father
before him, was known as
“Brassey Brett” from their
job of polishing the horses’
brasses. When he joined
Bill Brett behind Capt. Lee, officer commanding the Calbourne home Guard at Westover Manor
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