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Send the (Home Guard) Cavalry !

York Press.

The early days of the Local Defence Volunteers/Home Guard in the UK threw up some formations much odder than the Walmington-on-Sea platoon. One of these was Home Guard mounted units. Of course, horse riders were used for communications in the early days, but these were fully-fledged cavalry/dragoon formations. This photo - dated 7 August, 1940, shows the York (Mounted) Home Guard on exercise. The York Press claimed that this was "England's only mounted section of the Home Guard" (note the Home Guard armbands worn by a number of the riders), and that it mounted nightly patrols over 100 square miles of Yorkshire's North Riding. Not, perhaps, the prime target for German parachutists; nonetheless, this unit testifies to the strength of the invasion panic in Britain during the Autumn of 1940, as well as the general enthusiasm for Home Guard enlistment in the early days. It is worth bearing in mind that WW1 produced its share of frustrated cavalrymen, and that enlistment in mounted local defence formations known as "yeomanry" was a time-honoured response of the English horse-owning classes to threats of invasion. Whether this form of Home Guard service persisted into the later history of the Guard ... I really do not know. Like much of the early history of the Home Guard, evidence is fragmentary. One thing is certain, however - the York troop's claim to be "England's only mounted section of the Home Guard" does not stand up ... Best regards, JR.