YP Letters: Pipe-smoking soldiers of the real Dad's Army

THE Yorkshire Post’s coverage of the Dad’s Army film brightened a rather dull January and brought smiles to the faces of those who can remember this wartime institution.

As a youngster, I remember the formation of a company in my village of Monk Bretton, where the old church school was used as headquarters.

The major local industries were coal mining and agriculture, but these “soldiers” protected the old building with sand bags and corrugated sheets and had a guard with fixed bayonet. Nearby was a brick-built air-raid shelter.

The captain of the company with three pips on his shoulder was a local businessman, Bingley Lancaster, who away from the Home Guard was an auctioneer and valuer.

My image of the Home 
Guard was my uncle George, 
a joiner and property 
manager, who lived at 
Silkstone Common.

He was the ideal chap to make those wooden rifles.

After work he would cycle home from Dodworth, change into his army uniform and then walk back to Dodworth with a real rifle slung on his shoulder and smoking his pipe.

I’ve never seen a pipe-smoking soldier on local streets since those days in the 1940s.