title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2021, a review of the current evidence infers from the timings provided by DNA studies that the dog was domesticated in Siberia 23,000 years ago by ancient North Siberians. The dog later dispersed from Siberia with the migration of peoples eastwards into the Americas and westwards across Eurasia. The ancient North Siberians were once a people whose ancestors archaeological remains have been found at the Paleolithic Yana RHS (Rhinoceros Horn Site) on the Yana River delta in arctic northern Siberia that is dated 31,600 YBP, and at the Mal'ta site near Lake Baikal in southern Siberia just north of Mongolia that is dated 24,000 YBP. Ancient dog remains dating to this time and place have yet to be discovered to support this hypothesis.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The review theorizes that the harsh climate of the Last Glacial Maximum may have brought humans and wolves closer together while they were isolated inside refuge areas. Both species hunt the same prey, and their increased interactions may have resulted in the shared scavenging of kills, wolves drawn to human campsites, a shift in their relationship, and eventually domestication.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Mitochondrial DNA indicates that almost all modern dogs fall into one of four monophyletic haplogroups which are named haplogroups A, B, C, and D. The majority of dogs fall within haplogroup A. The mDNA "molecular clock" indicates that 22,800 YBP the first genetic divergence (split) occurred in haplogroup A, resulting in the lineages A1b and A2. This timing is the oldest known between any two dog mDNA lineages. As humans migrated across Siberia, through Beringia, and down through the Americas, archaeological remains indicate that their mDNA lineages diverged several times. Based on these timings, and the timings of several dog divergences found from early dog remains across these regions, it was discovered that there was a correlation between human and dog migrations and population divergences. This correlation suggests that where people went, their dogs also went. Tracing back through these human and dog lineages and timings led to the inference that the dog was first domesticated in Siberia nearly 23,000 YBP by North Siberians.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Another study undertook an analysis of the complete mitogenome sequences of 555 modern and ancient dogs. The sequences showed an increase in the population size approximately 23,500 YBP, which broadly coincides with the proposed genetic divergence of the ancestors of dogs from modern wolves. A ten-fold increase in the population size occurred after 15,000 YBP, which is consistent with the demographic dependence of dogs on the human population.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Earlier in 2018, a study proposes that the Yana site showed evidence of wolf pre-domestication. There are remains of medium-sized canids found there that could not be referred to as dogs, however they showed indications of living with people. These included worn and partially-missing teeth, and the skull of an almost-adult showing juvenile features. The morphologic and morphometric anomalies in the specimens indicate commensalism and the earliest stage of domestication.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Studies indicate admixture between the dog-wolf ancestor and golden jackals. However, since domestication, there was almost negligible gene flow from wolves into dogs but substantial gene flow from dogs into wolves. There were some wolves that were related to all ancient and modern dogs. A very small amount of gene flow was detected between coyotes and ancient American dogs, and between the African wolf and African dogs but in which direction could not be determined. The short divergence time between dogs and wolves followed by their continuous admixture has led to 20% of the genome of East Asian wolves and 7–25% of the genome of European and Middle Eastern wolves showing contributions from dogs. The β-defensin gene responsible for the black coat of North American wolves was the result of a single introgression from early Native American dogs in the Yukon between 1,600 and 7,200 YBP. Dogs and wolves living in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau carry the EPAS1 allele that is associated with high-altitude oxygen adaptation, which has been contributed by a ghost population of an unknown wolf-like canid. This ghost population is deeply-diverged from modern Holarctic wolves and dogs, and has contributed 39% to the Himalayan wolf's nuclear genome. Limited gene flow has likely occurred in arctic dogs.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The earliest generally accepted dog remains were discovered in Bonn-Oberkassel, Germany. Contextual, isotopic, genetic, and morphological evidence shows that this dog was clearly not a local wolf. The dog was dated to 14,223 YBP.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 1914, on the eve of the First World War, two human skeletons were discovered during basalt quarrying at Oberkassel, Bonn in Germany. With them were found a right mandible of a "wolf" and other animal bones. After the end of the First World War, in 1919 a full study was made of these remains. The mandible was recorded as ""Canis lupus", the wolf" and some of the other animal bones were assigned to it. The remains were then stored and forgotten for fifty years. In the late 1970s there was renewed interest in the Oberkassel remains and the mandible was re-examined and reclassified as belonging to a domesticated dog. The mitochondrial DNA sequence of the mandible was matched to "Canis familiaris" – a dog and falls within mDNA haplogroup C of dogs. The bodies were dated to 14,223 YBP. This implies that in Western Europe there were morphologically and genetically "modern" dogs in existence around 14,500 YBP.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Later studies assigned more of the other animal bones to the dog until most of a skeleton could be assembled. The humans were a man aged 40 years and a woman aged 25 years. All three skeletal remains were found sprayed with red hematite powder and covered with large 20 cm thick basalt blocks. The consensus is that a dog was buried along with two humans. A tooth belonging to a smaller and older dog was also identified but it had not been sprayed with red powder. The cause of the death of the two humans is not known. A pathology study of the dog remains suggests that it had died young after suffering from canine distemper between ages 19 and 23 weeks. The dog could not have survived during this period without intensive human care. During this period the dog was of no utilitarian use to humans, and suggests the existence of emotional or symbolic ties between these humans and this dog. In conclusion, near the end of the Late Pleistocene at least some humans regarded dogs not just materialistically, but had developed emotional and caring bonds for their dogs.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2020, the sequencing of ancient dog genomes indicates that dogs share a common ancestry and descended from an ancient, now-extinct wolf population - or closely related wolf populations - which was distinct from the modern wolf lineage. By the close of the last Ice Age (11,700 YBP), five ancestral lineages had diversified from each other and were expressed in dog samples taken from the Neolithic era Levant (7,000 YBP), Mesolithic era Karelia (10,900 YBP), Mesolithic era Baikal (7,000 YBP), ancient America (4,000 YBP), and the New Guinea singing dog (present day).


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The world's ancient and modern dog population structure can be classified into Arctic/Americas, East Asian, and West Eurasian. The Arctic/Americas lineage includes modern arctic breeds, a 9,500 YBP dog from Zhokhov Island, ancient pre-European contact American dogs, mid-Holocene dogs from Lake Baikal, historical dogs from across Siberia, and dogs from the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug region in northwestern Siberia. The East Asian lineage includes modern dogs from China, Vietnam, Island South East Asia, and the dingo and the New Guinea singing dog that represent unadmixed East Asian ancestry. The West Eurasian lineage includes ancient Levantine and ancient Near Eastern dogs, ancient and modern European dogs, modern African dogs, and Bronze Age dogs from the Eurasian Steppe.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Ancient and modern European dogs have a closer relationship with arctic dogs than do Near Eastern dogs, indicating a major admixture event in Europe. Analyses of a recently sequenced genome from the Mesolithic site of Veretye, Karelia (∼10,000 YBP) in Northeast Europe recapitulate findings that show these dogs possessed ancestry related to both Arctic (~70%) and Western Eurasian (~30%) lineages. This suggests that other modern and ancient (post-Mesolithic) European dogs sequenced to date, Mesolithic dogs in Europe already possessed both Arctic and Western Eurasian ancestry. The fact that the ancient Siberian dog from Zhokhov Island, dated ∼1,000 years after the Veretye, Karelia dogs, possesses no Western Eurasian ancestry, indicates that Western dog ancestry had not yet reached the Siberian Arctic by 9,500 YBP. The 9,500 YBP Zhokhov dog is more closely related to a 6,000 YPB dog from Lake Baikal than related to the ancient dogs found in North America, which supports that a genetic split had occurred between the early Arctic and North American dogs and that their common ancestor dates much older than the 9,500 YBP Zhokhov dog The earliest Neolithic European dog dated 7,000 YBP was found to be a mixture of the Karelian and the Levantine lineages. The lineage of a Neolithic dog dated 5,000 YBP found in southwestern Sweden was the ancestor of 90-100% of modern European dogs. This implies that in Europe a population of half-Karelian and half-Levantine dogs similar to this one - but not necessarily originating in Sweden - replaced all of the other dog populations. These findings together support a dual ancestry for modern European dogs, which possess 54% Karelian and 46% Levantine ancestries.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Siberian dogs were genetically similar 9,500–7,000 YBP showing Arctic ancestry, however the introduction of dogs from the Eurasian Steppe and Europe led to substantial genetic admixture, with ancient and historical Siberian dogs exhibiting varying levels of Arctic and Near East ancestry. Dogs from the Bronze Age Eurasian Steppe exhibited 40% ancient arctic and 60% ancient Near East ancestry until the Middle Ages. This implies that dogs migrated as part of the Neolithic expansion of farming from the Near East into the steppes. In the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug region in northwestern Siberia, dogs from 2,000 YBP were less related to the dogs of the Eurasian Steppe and Europe than dogs 1,000 YBP. The archaeological presence of glass beads and metal items indicate that this region was connected to a large trade network which included the Near East, the Black Sea region, and the Eurasian Steppe which led to the acquiring of dogs from these regions. The acquisition of dogs from the Near East adapted to farming, and the Eurasian Steppe adapted to pastoralism, may have provided behavioural and morphological characteristics when admixed with Arctic dogs, leading to their adaptation from foraging to reindeer pastoralism. Two dog specimens that are nearly 100 years old and obtained from the Nenets people on the Yamal Peninsula found that these are related to two specimens dated 2,000 years old and 850 years old, which suggests continuity of the lineage in this region. The two 100 year old dogs were closely related with the Samoyed breed. Siberian Huskies show a genetic affinity with historical East Siberian dogs and ancient Lake Baikal dogs. Together, this indicates that the ancient arctic lineage lives on in some modern Siberian breeds.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Ancient dog genomes were compared with ancient human genomes across time, space, and cultural context to reveal that these generally matched each other. These generally share similar features but they differ across time. There were some large differences: the same dogs could be found in both the Neolithic Levant and later in Chalcolithic Iran (5,800 YBP) although the human populations of each were different; in Neolithic Ireland (4,800 YBP) and Germany (7,000 YBP) the dogs are more associated with northern European hunter-gatherers while the humans were more associated with people from the Levant; and on the Bronze Age Pontic–Caspian steppe (3,800 YBP) and in Corded Ware culture Germany (4,700 YBP) the human population had shifted away from the Neolithic European populations but the dogs had not. European dogs have a stronger genetic relationship to Siberian and ancient American dogs than to the New Guinea singing dog, which has an East Asian origin, reflecting an early polar relationship between humans in the Americas and Europe. People living in the Lake Baikal region 18,000—24,000 YBP were genetically related to western Eurasians and contributed to the ancestry of Native Americans, however these were then replaced by other populations. Ten thousand years later, around 7,000 YBP, the dogs in the Lake Baikal region still exhibited a relationship with Europe and the Americas. This implies that there was a shared population structure for both dogs and humans across circumpolar northern Eurasia.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Ancient human genomes show a major ancestry transformation which coincided with the expansion of Neolithic farmers from the Near East into Europe. Ancient dog mitochondria suggests these were accompanied by dogs, which led to an associated ancestry transformation for dogs in Europe. The expansions of steppe pastoralists associated with the Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya culture into Late Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe transformed the ancestry of human populations but their accompanying dogs had no major impact on European dog populations. The steppe pastoralists also expanded eastwards but had little impact on the ancestry of East Asian people. However, many Chinese dogs appear to be a product of admixture between the lineage of a 3,800 YBP western Eurasian Srubnaya culture dog and the ancestor of the dingo and New Guinea singing dog. Populations of modern Siberian dogs also show ancestry from 7,000 YBP Lake Baikal dogs but little or no New Guinea singing dog ancestry, indicating no East Asian ancestry.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The AMY2B gene codes a protein which assists with the first step in the digestion of dietary starch and glycogen. An expansion of this gene would enable early dogs to exploit a starch-rich diet. At the beginning of agriculture, only some dogs possessed this adaptation which became widespread several thousand years later.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Dogs migrated alongside humans but the movement of the two did not always align, indicating that in some cases humans migrated without dogs or that dogs moved between human groups, possibly as a cultural or trade item. Dogs appear to have been dispersed across Eurasia and into the Americas without any major human population movement being involved, which remains a mystery. Past studies have suggested the dog's place of origin but these studies were based upon today's patterns of genomic diversity or possible links to modern wolf populations. The dog's history was obscured to these studies because of recent gene flow and population dynamics – the geographical origin of the dog remains unknown.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: During the Upper Paleolithic (50,000–10,000 YBP), the increase in human population density, advances in blade and hunting technology, and climate change may have altered prey densities and made scavenging crucial to the survival of some wolf populations. Adaptations to scavenging such as tameness, small body size, and a decreased age of reproduction would reduce their hunting efficiency further, eventually leading to obligated scavenging. Whether these earliest dogs were simply human-commensal scavengers or they played some role as companions or hunters that hastened their spread is unknown.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Researchers have proposed that in the past a hunting partnership existed between humans and dogs that was the basis for dog domestication.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Petroglyph rock art dating to 8,000 YBP at the sites of Shuwaymis and Jubbah, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, depict large numbers of dogs participating in hunting scenes with some being controlled on leashes. The transition from the Late Pleistocene into the early Holocene was marked by climatic change from cold and dry to warmer, wetter conditions and rapid shifts in flora and fauna, with much of the open habitat of large herbivores being replaced by forests. In the early Holocene, it is proposed that along with changes in arrow-head technology that hunting dogs were used by hunters to track and retrieve wounded game in thick forests. The dog's ability to chase, track, sniff out and hold prey can significantly increase the success of hunters in forests, where human senses and location skills are not as sharp as in more open habitats. Dogs are still used for hunting in forests today.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The domestic dog was present 9,500 YBP on what is now Zhokhov Island, arctic northeastern Siberia. The archaeological discoveries at the Zhokhov site includes the remains of dog harness straps similar to those used by the modern Inuit, the bone remains of polar bears and reindeer which suggests a wide hunting range and the transport of large body parts back to the site, and tools made from obsidian transported from 1,500 kilometres away. These findings suggest long-distance transport through the use of sled dogs.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: A study of dog remains indicates that these were selectively bred to be either as sled dogs or as hunting dogs, which implies that a sled dog standard and a hunting dog standard existed at that time. The optimal maximum size for a sled dog is 20–25 kg based on thermo-regulation, and the ancient sled dogs were between 16 and 25 kg. The same standard has been found in the remains of sled dogs from this region 2,000 YBP and in the modern Siberian husky breed standard. Other dogs were more massive at 30 kg and appear to be dogs that had been crossed with wolves and used for polar bear hunting. At death, the heads of the dogs had been carefully separated from their bodies by humans, probably for ceremonial reasons.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The study proposes that after having diverged from the common ancestor shared with the grey wolf, the evolution of the dog proceeded in three stages. The first was natural selection based on feeding behavior within the ecological niche that had been formed through human activity. The second was artificial selection based on tamability. The third was directed selection based on forming breeds that possessed qualities to help with specific tasks within the human economy. The process commenced 30,000–40,000 YBP with its speed increasing in each stage until domestication became complete.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The Zhokhov dogs are the oldest known dogs to exhibit colour patterns. These possessed black colour patterns on their backs, which helped to distinguish them from white arctic wolves.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Material culture provides evidence for dog harnessing in the Arctic 9,000 YBP. Ancient DNA from the remains of these dogs indicates that they belong to the same genetic lineage as modern Arctic dogs, and that this lineage gave rise to the earliest native American dogs. Since the earliest native American dogs, multiple, genetically different lineages of dogs were introduced by the Thule people and European settlers. The European dogs replaced the dog lineages that were introduced more than 10,000 years ago.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In North America, the earliest dog remains were found in Lawyer's Cave on the Alaskan mainland east of Wrangell Island in the Alexander Archipelago of southeast Alaska, radiocarbon dating indicates 10,150 YBP. A genetic-based estimate indicates that this dog's lineage had split from the Siberian Zhokhov Island dog lineage 16,700 YBP. This timing coincides with the suggested opening of the North Pacific coastal route into North America. Stable isotope analysis can be used to identify some chemical elements, allowing researchers to make inferences about the diet of a species. An isotope analysis of bone collagen indicates a marine diet. The next earliest dogs were found in Illinois and radiocarbon dating indicates 9,900 YBP. These include three isolated burials at the Koster Site near the lower Illinois River in Greene County, and one burial 35 km away at the Stilwell II site in Pike County. These dogs were medium-sized adults around in height and around in weight, with very active lifestyles and varied morphologies. Stable isotope analysis indicates a diet consisting largely of freshwater fish. Similar dog burials across Eurasia are thought to be due to the dog's importance in hunting to people who were trying to adapt to the changing environments and prey species during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. In these places, the dog had gained an elevated social status.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2018, a study compared sequences of North American dog fossils with Siberian dog fossils and modern dogs. The nearest relative to the North American fossils was a 9,000 YBP fossil discovered on Zhokhov Island, arctic north-eastern Siberia, which was connected to the mainland at that time. The study inferred from mDNA that all of the North American dogs shared a common ancestor dated 14,600 YBP, and this ancestor had diverged along with the ancestor of the Zhokhov dog from their common ancestor 15,600 YBP. The timing of the Koster dogs shows that dogs entered North America from Siberia 4,500 years after humans did, were isolated for the next 9,000 years, and after contact with Europeans these no longer exist because they were replaced by Eurasian dogs. The (earlier wave of, prior to the Thule/Inuit introduction) pre-contact dogs exhibit a unique genetic signature that is now gone, with nDNA indicating that their nearest genetic relatives today are the arctic breed dogs: Alaskan malamutes, Greenland dogs, and Alaskan huskies and Siberian huskies.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2019, a study found that those dogs brought initially into the North American Arctic from northeastern Siberia were later replaced by dogs accompanying the Inuit during their expansion beginning 2,000 years ago. These Inuit dogs were more genetically diverse and more morphologically divergent when compared with the earlier dogs. Today, Arctic sledge dogs are among the last descendants in the Americas of this pre-European dog lineage. In 2020, the sequencing of ancient dog genomes indicates that in two Mexican breeds the Chihuahua retains 4% and the Xoloitzcuintli 3% pre-colonial ancestry.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2015, a study mapped the first genome of a 35,000 YBP Pleistocene wolf fossil found in the Taimyr Peninsula, arctic northern Siberia and compared it with those of modern dogs and grey wolves. The Taimyr wolf was identified through mDNA as "Canis lupus" but from a population which had diverged from the dog–grey wolf lineage immediately before the dog and grey wolf diverged from each other, which implies that the majority of grey wolf populations today stems from an ancestral population that lived less than 35,000 years ago but before the inundation of the Bering Land Bridge with the subsequent isolation of Eurasian and North American wolves.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The Taimyr wolf was equally related to both dogs and modern wolves, but shared more alleles (i.e. gene expressions) with those breeds that are associated with high latitudes and arctic human populations: the Siberian husky and Greenland dog, and to a lesser extent the Shar Pei and Finnish spitz. The Greenland dog shows 3.5% Taimyr wolf ancestry, which indicates admixture between the Taimyr wolf population and the ancestral dog population of these four high-latitude breeds. These results can be explained either by a very early presence of dogs in northern Eurasia or by the genetic legacy of the Taimyr wolf being preserved in northern wolf populations until the arrival of dogs into high latitudes. This introgression could have provided early dogs living in high latitudes with adaptations to the new and challenging environment. It also indicates that the ancestry of present-day dog breeds descends from more than one region. An attempt to explore admixture between the Taimyr wolf and grey wolves produced unreliable results.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: As the Taimyr wolf had contributed to the genetic makeup of the Arctic breeds, this indicates that the descendants of the Taimyr wolf survived until dogs were domesticated in Europe and arrived at high latitudes where they mixed with local wolves, and these both contributed to the modern Arctic breeds. Based on the most widely accepted oldest zooarchaeological dog remains, domestic dogs most likely arrived at high latitudes within the last 15,000 years.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The nuclear genome sequence was generated for a dog specimen that was found in the Late Neolithic passage grave at Newgrange, Ireland and radiocarbon dated at 4,800 YBP. A genetic analysis of the Newgrange dog showed that it was male, did not possess genetic variants associated with modern coat length nor color, was not as able to process starch as efficiently as modern dogs but more efficiently than wolves, and showed ancestry from a population of wolves that could not be found in other dogs nor wolves today. The mutation rates calibrated from both the Taimyr wolf and the Newgrange dog genomes suggest that the modern wolf and dog populations diverged from a common ancestor between 20,000 and 60,000 YBP. This indicates that either dogs were domesticated much earlier than their first appearance in the archaeological record, or they arrived in the Arctic early, or both. Another view is that because northern breeds can trace at least some of their ancestry back to the Taimyr wolf, this indicates the possibility of more than one domestication event.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2020, the nuclear genome was generated of a 33,000 YBP Pleistocene wolf from an archaeological site on the Yana River, arctic northeastern Siberia. The Yana wolf sequence was more closely related to the 35,000 YBP Taimyr wolf than it was to modern wolves. There was evidence of gene flow between the Yana-Taimyr wolves and the Pre-Columbian, Zhokhov, and modern sled dogs. This suggests that genetic admixture has occurred between the Pleistocene wolves and the ancestor of these dogs. There was no evidence of admixture between sled dogs and the modern grey wolf for the past 9,500 years. Greenland sled dogs have been kept isolated from other breeds since their arrival in Greenland with the Inuit 850 years ago. Their lineage traces more genomic history to the Zhokhov dogs than any other arctic breed. Sled dogs do not show an adaptation to a starch-rich diet when compared with other dogs but do show an adaptation to a high intake of fat and fatty acids, which was not found in the Zhokhov dogs. The same adaptation has been found in Inuit and other arctic peoples. This suggests that the sled dogs adapted to the low starch and high fat diet of the people they coexisted with.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2021, a study of another 4 Late Pleistocene northeast Siberian wolf sequences showed that they are genetically similar to the Taimyr and Yana wolves. These 6 extinct wolves sequentially branched off from the lineage that leads to the modern wolf and dog. The 50,000 YBP Tirekhtyakh River, 48,000 YBP Bunge-Toll site, and 32,000 YBP Yana RHS specimens were separate lineages not related to each other. The 16,800 YBP Ulakhan Sular and the 14,100 YBP Tumat specimens both cluster with a modern wolf from Ellesmere Island, indicating that these 2 specimens derive from the same lineage as the North American wolves. All 6 Late Pleistocene wolves share alleles with Arctic dogs: Greenland dogs, Siberian and Alaskan huskies, Alaskan malamutes, the extinct Zhokhov dog and the extinct pre-European contact dogs of North America. It is possible that another population of extinct wolves, that were related to all six specimens, may have contributed to the ancestry of the Arctic dogs. There was evidence that 4 of the extinct Siberian wolves had contributed to the ancestry of modern wolf populations in Shanxi, western China, and possibly Chukotka and Inner Mongolia.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The oldest fossil of a dog that has been found in Japan dates to 9,500 YBP. With the beginning of the Holocene and its warmer weather, temperate deciduous forests rapidly spread onto the main island of Honshu and caused an adaption away from hunting megafauna (Naumann's elephant and Yabe's giant deer) to hunting the quicker sika deer and wild boar in dense forest. With this came a change in hunting technology, including a shift to smaller, triangular points for arrows. A study of the Jōmon people that lived on the Pacific coast of Honshu during the early Holocene shows that they were conducting individual dog burials and were probably using dogs as tools for hunting sika deer and wild boar, as hunters in Japan still do today.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Hunting dogs make major contributions to forager societies and the ethnographic record shows them being given proper names, treated as family members, and considered separate to other types of dogs. This special treatment includes separate burials with markers and grave-goods, with those that were exceptional hunters or that were killed on the hunt often venerated. A dog's value as a hunting partner gives them status as a living weapon and the most skilled elevated to taking on a "personhood", with their social position in life and in death similar to that of the skilled hunters.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: Intentional dog burials together with ungulate hunting is also found in other early Holocene deciduous forest forager societies in Europe and North America, indicating that across the Holarctic temperate zone hunting dogs were a widespread adaptation to forest ungulate hunting.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2020, the sequencing of ancient dog genomes indicates that the lineage of modern dogs in sub-Sahara Africa shares a single origin from the Levant, where an ancestral specimen was dated to 7,000 YBP. This finding mirrors the gene flow of humans from the Levant into Africa during the Neolithic, along with cattle. Since then, there has been limited gene flow into African dogs until the past few hundred years. The descendants of a dog from Iran dated 5,800 YBP and dogs from Europe completely replaced the Levant dog lineage 2,300 YBP. This was associated with human migration from Iran and some minor migration from Europe. Today all Near Eastern dogs show 81% ancient Iranian and 19% Neolithic European ancestry.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: The oldest dog remains to be found in Africa date 5,900 YBP and were discovered at the Merimde Beni-Salame Neolithic site in the Nile Delta, Egypt. The next oldest remains date 5,500 YBP and were found at Esh Shareinab on the Nile in Sudan. This suggests that the dog arrived from Asia at the same time as domestic sheep and goats. The dog then spread north to south down Africa beside livestock herders, with remains found in archaeological sites dated 925–1,055 YBP at Ntusi in Uganda, dated 950–1,000 YBP at Kalomo in Zambia, and then at sites south of the Limpopo River and into southern Africa. In 2020, the sequencing of ancient dog genomes indicates that the southern African Rhodesian Ridgeback retains 4% pre-colonial ancestry.


title: Domestication of the dog

text: In 2020, an mDNA study of ancient dog fossils from the Yellow River and Yangtze River basins of southern China showed that most of the ancient dogs fell within haplogroup A1b, as do the Australian dingoes and the pre-colonial dogs of the Pacific, but in low frequency in China today. The specimen from the Tianluoshan archaeological site, Zhejiang province dates to 7,000 YBP and is basal to the entire lineage. The dogs belonging to this haplogroup were once widely distributed in southern China, then dispersed through Southeast Asia into New Guinea and Oceania, but were replaced in China 2,000 YBP by dogs of other lineages.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard (initially Local Defence Volunteers or LDV) was an armed citizen militia supporting the British Army during the Second World War. Operational from 1940 to 1944, the Home Guard had 1.5 million local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, such as those who were too young or too old to join the regular armed services (regular military service was restricted to those aged 18 to 41) and those in reserved occupations. Excluding those already in the armed services, the civilian police or civil defence, approximately one in five men were volunteers. Their role was to act as a secondary defence force in case of invasion by the forces of Nazi Germany.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard were to try to slow down the advance of the enemy even by a few hours to give the regular troops time to regroup. They were also to defend key communication points and factories in rear areas against possible capture by paratroops or fifth columnists. A key purpose was to maintain control of the civilian population in the event of an invasion, to forestall panic and to prevent communication routes from being blocked by refugees to free the regular forces to fight the Germans. The Home Guard continued to man roadblocks and guard the coastal areas of the United Kingdom and other important places such as airfields, factories and explosives stores until late 1944, when they were stood down. They were finally disbanded on 31 December 1945, eight months after Germany's surrender.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Men aged 17 to 65 years could join, although the upper age limit was not strictly enforced. Service was unpaid but gave a chance for older or inexperienced soldiers to support the war effort.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The origins of the Second World War Home Guard can be traced to Captain Tom Wintringham, who returned from the Spanish Civil War and wrote a book entitled "How to Reform the Army". In the book, as well as many regular army reforms, Wintringham called for the creation of 12 divisions similar in composition to that of the International Brigades, which had been formed in Spain during the conflict. The divisions would be raised by voluntary enlistment targeting ex-servicemen and youths. Despite great interest by the War Office in the book's assertion that 'security is possible', Wintringham's call to train 100,000 men immediately was not implemented.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: When Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, debates began in official circles about the possible ways in which the German military might invade Britain. In the first week of the conflict, numerous diplomatic and intelligence reports seemed to indicate that there was the possibility of an imminent German amphibious assault. Many government ministers and senior army officials, including the Commander in Chief Home Forces, General Walter Kirke, believed that the threat of invasion was greatly exaggerated and were sceptical, but others were not, including Winston Churchill, the new First Lord of the Admiralty.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Churchill argued that some form of home defence force should be raised from people who were ineligible to serve in the regular forces but wished to serve their country. In a letter to Samuel Hoare, the Lord Privy Seal, on 8 October 1939, Churchill called for a Home Guard force of 500,000 men over the age of 40 to be formed.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: While government officials were debating the need for a home defence force, such a force was actually being formed without any official encouragement. In Essex, men not eligible for call-up into the armed forces were coming forward to join the self-styled "Legion of Frontiersmen". Officials were soon informed of the development of the legion, with the Adjutant-General, Sir Robert Gordon-Finlayson, arguing that the government should encourage the development of more unofficial organisations. The fear of invasion in 1939 quickly dissipated as it became evident that the German military was not in a position to launch an invasion of Britain; official enthusiasm for home defence forces waned and the legion appears to have dissolved itself at the same time.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Battle of France began on 10 May 1940, with the Wehrmacht invading Belgium, the Netherlands and France. By 20 May, German forces had reached the English Channel, and on 28 May, the Belgian Army surrendered. The combination of the large-scale combined operations mounted by the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Norway in April and the prospect that much of the English Channel coast would soon be occupied made the prospect of a German invasion of the British Isles alarmingly real. Fears of an invasion grew rapidly, spurred on by reports both in the press and from official government bodies, of a fifth column operating in Britain that would aid an invasion by German airborne forces.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The government soon found itself under increasing pressure to extend the internment of suspect aliens to prevent the formation of a fifth column and to allow the population to take up arms to defend themselves against an invasion. Calls for some form of home defence force soon began to be heard from the press and from private individuals. The press baron Lord Kemsley privately proposed to the War Office that rifle clubs form the nucleus of a home defence force, and Josiah Wedgwood, a Labour MP, wrote to the prime minister asking that the entire adult population be trained in the use of arms and given weapons to defend themselves. Similar calls appeared in newspaper columns: in the 12 May issue of the "Sunday Express", a brigadier called on the government to issue free arms licences and permits to buy ammunition to men possessing small arms, and the same day, the "Sunday Pictorial" asked if the government had considered training golfers in rifle shooting to eliminate stray parachutists.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The calls alarmed government and senior military officials, who worried about the prospect of the population forming private defence forces that the army would not be able to control, and in mid-May, the Home Office issued a press release on the matter. It was the task of the army to deal with enemy parachutists, as any civilians who carried weapons and fired on German troops were likely to be executed if captured. Moreover, any lone parachutist descending from the skies in the summer of 1940 was far more likely to be a downed RAF airman than a German "Fallschirmjäger".


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Nevertheless, private defence forces soon began to be formed throughout the country, often sponsored by employers seeking to bolster defence of their factories. This placed the government in an awkward position. The private forces, which the army might not be able to control, could well inhibit the army's efforts during an invasion, but to ignore the calls for a home defence force to be set up would be politically problematic. An officially-sponsored home defence force would allow the government greater control and also allow for greater security around vulnerable areas such as munitions factories and airfields; but there was some confusion over who would form and control the force, with separate plans drawn up by the War Office and General Headquarters Home Forces under General Kirke.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The government and senior military officials rapidly compared plans and, by 13 May 1940, worked out an improvised plan for a home defence force, to be called the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). The rush to complete a plan and announce it to the public had led to a number of administrative and logistical problems, such as how the volunteers in the new force would be armed, which caused problems as the force evolved. On the evening of 14 May 1940, Secretary of State for War Anthony Eden gave a radio broadcast announcing the formation of the LDV and calling for volunteers to join the force: "You will not be paid, but you will receive a uniform and will be armed."


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: In the official radio announcement, Eden called on men between the ages of 17 and 65 years in Britain who were not in military service but wished to defend their country against an invasion to enroll in the LDV at their local police station. It was anticipated that up to 500,000 men might volunteer, a number that conformed generally with the Army's expectation of the total numbers required to fulfill the LDV's expected functions. However, the announcement was met with much enthusiasm: 250,000 volunteers tried to sign up in the first seven days, and by July this had increased to 1.5 million. Social groups such as cricket clubs began forming their own units, but the bulk were workplace-based, especially as co-operation from employers was necessary to ensure that volunteers would be available for training and operational patrols. Indeed, many employers envisaged the LDV units primarily as protecting industrial plants from fifth column attack.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard did not initially admit women to its ranks. Some women formed their own groups like the Amazon Defence Corps. In December 1941, a more organised but still unofficial Women's Home Defence (WHD) was formed under the direction of Dr Edith Summerskill, Labour MP for Fulham West. WHD members were given weapons training and basic military training. Limited female involvement was permitted later, on the understanding that these would be in traditional female support roles (e.g. clerical, driving) and not in any way seen as combatants.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The War Office continued to lay down the administrative and logistical foundations for the LDV organisation. Eden's public words were generally interpreted as an explicit promise to provide everyone who volunteered with a personal firearm. In retrospect, it was recognised that recruitment would have been better limited to the numbers required (and capable of being armed), with later volunteers given places on a waiting list. However, once volunteers had been enlisted, it was considered impossible from a public relations perspective to then dismiss them. Nevertheless, the regular forces saw no priority in providing more arms and equipment to the new force than would have been needed had numbers been properly constrained in the first place.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: In telegrams to the lord lieutenants of each county it was explained that LDV units would operate in predefined military areas already used by the regular army, with a General Staff Officer coordinating with civilian regional commissioners to divide these areas into smaller zones. In London this was organised on the basis of police districts. On 17 May, the LDV achieved official legal status when the Privy Council issued the "Defence (Local Defence Volunteers) Order in Council", and orders were issued from the War Office to regular army headquarters throughout Britain explaining the status of LDV units; volunteers would be divided into sections, platoons and companies but would not be paid and leaders of units would not hold commissions or have the power to command regular forces.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Implementation of the legislation proved to be extremely difficult, particularly as the primary focus of the War Office and General Headquarters Home Forces was on Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk between 27 May and 4 June 1940. The apparent lack of focus led to many LDV members becoming impatient, particularly when it was announced that volunteers would receive only armbands printed with "L.D.V." on them until proper uniforms could be manufactured, and there was no mention of weapons being issued to units. The impatience led to many units conducting their own patrols without official permission, often led by men who had previously served in the armed forces.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The presence of many veterans and the appointment of ex-officers as commanders of LDV units, only worsened the situation, with many believing that they did not require training before being issued weapons. That led to numerous complaints being received by the War Office and the press and to many ex-senior officers attempting to use their influence to obtain weapons or permission to begin patrolling. The issue of weapons to LDV units was particularly problematic for the War Office, as it was recognised that the rearming and reequipping of the regular forces would have to take precedence over the LDV. All civilian firearms, especially shotguns and pistols, previously were to have been handed in to local police stations, and volunteers were allowed often by the police to retrieve these for their LDV duties. In rural areas, volunteer shotgun users initially organised themselves into vigilante groups, dubbed 'the parashots' by the press, to watch the early morning skies for German parachutists.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: For public (and enemy) consumption, the government maintained that large stocks of Lee-Enfield rifles remained from the First World War, but the actual total reserve stockpile amounted to 300,000, and they had already been earmarked for the expansion of the army by 122 infantry battalions. Instead, the War Office issued instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails and emergency orders were placed for Ross rifles from Canada. In the absence of proper weapons, local units improvised weapons, especially grenades, mortars and grenade projectors, from whatever came to hand, and the legacy of self-reliant improvisation in the face of what was interpreted as official disregard and obstruction was to remain as a characteristic of the Home Guard throughout its existence.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Another problem that was encountered as the LDV was organised was the definition of the role the organisation was to play. Initially, in the eyes of the War Office and the army, the LDV was to act as 'an armed police constabulary', which, in the event of an invasion, was to man roadblocks, observe German troop movements, convey information to the regular forces and guard places of strategic or tactical importance. The War Office believed that the LDV would act best in such a passive role because of its lack of training, weapons and proper equipment. Such a role clashed with the expectations of LDV commanders and members who believed that the organisation would be best suited to an active role of hunting down and killing parachutists, and fifth columnists, as well as attacking and harassing German forces. "In the popular mind it was the twin terrors of Nazi paratrooper and Fifth Columnist traitor which were the Home Guard’s nemesis, its natural enemy. Notwithstanding that the Home Guard actually spent most of its time preparing to defend ‘nodal points’ against tank attack, operating anti-aircraft artillery or locating unexploded bombs."The clash led to morale problems and even more complaints to the press and the War Office from LDV members who were opposed, as they saw it, the government's leaving them defenceless and placing them in a noncombatant role. Complaints about the role of the LDV and continuing problems encountered by the War Office in its attempts to clothe and arm the LDV, led the government to respond to public pressure in August, redefining the role of the LDV to include delaying and obstructing German forces through any means possible. Also in August, the Home Office and MI5 instituted the 'Invasion List', a list of around 1,000 persons whose 'recent conduct or words indicated that they were likely to assist the enemy' and who would be apprehended by the police in the event of an invasion, hoping thereby to forestall the expectations of many LDV volunteers that they would then be empowered to act as 'Judge, Jury and Executioner' of potential collaborators and fifth columnists.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: At the same time, Churchill, who had assumed the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, became involved in the matter after being alerted to the problems, obtaining a summary of the current LDV position from the War Office on 22 June 1940. After reviewing the summary, Churchill wrote to Eden stating that in his opinion, one of the main causes of disciplinary and morale problems stemmed from the uninspiring title of the LDV and suggesting that it be renamed as the 'Home Guard'. Despite resistance from Eden and other government officials, who noted that one million "LDV" armbands had already been printed and the cost of printing another million 'Home Guard' armbands would be excessive, Churchill would not be dissuaded. On 22 July, the LDV was officially renamed the Home Guard. Churchill ruled decisively on the issue of whether civilian volunteers should actively resist German forces, even at the expense of setting themselves outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The 'Rules of War', he pointed out, had been drawn up with the express intention of avoiding defeated combatants fighting on to the last. However, in the fight against Nazism, any outcome, including the complete destruction of a town and the massacre of its population, would be preferable to its acquiescing to Nazi rule.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard in 1940 were an armed uniformed civilian militia, entirely distinct from the regular armed forces. Volunteers originally had no recognised military rank, were not subject to military discipline and could withdraw (or be withdrawn by their employers) at any time. In 1941, nominal ranks were introduced for Home Guard 'officers', and in 1942, limited conscription was implemented intended for circumstances where Home Guard forces were taking over functions from regular forces (chiefly coastal artillery and anti-aircraft batteries), and non-officer volunteers became 'privates'. Volunteers remained legally civilians and failure to attend when ordered to do so was punishable by civilian authorities. Nevertheless, the British Government consistently maintained that as Home Guard service was strictly to be undertaken only in approved uniform. Uniformed volunteers would be lawful combatants within the Geneva Conventions and so would be "prisoners of war" if captured. That was an argument with a long history since armed civilian irregulars (uniformed and non-uniformed) had been widely employed by smaller combatant nations in the First World War, but former British governments had consistently refused to recognise captured irregular combatants in uniform as prisoners of war. Indeed, most of the Irish Republican volunteers executed by the British administration following the 1916 Easter Rising had been fighting or at least surrendered in full Irish Volunteer or Irish Citizen Army uniforms. However, that was an uprising or rebellion of subjects of the Crown and was not entirely comparable to combatants in a war between sovereign states.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: German and Austrian military traditions were, if anything, more absolute in rejecting any recognition of civilian militia combatants as prisoners of war since the German response to the nonuniformed "francs-tireurs" who had attacked German forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It had long been standard German military practice that civilians who attacked German troops in areas that opposing regular forces had surrendered, withdrawn or chosen not to defend should be considered properly liable to be shot out of hand. Indeed, German military doctrine had always maintained that their military forces were further entitled in such circumstances to take reprisals against unarmed local civilians - taking and executing hostages, and leveling villages: "fight chivalrously against an honest foe; armed irregulars deserve no quarter". The actions of regular German forces during the Second World War consistently conformed to those principles: captured partisans in the Soviet Union and the Balkans, whether they were fighting in uniform or not, were killed on the spot. German radio broadcasts described the British Home Guard as 'gangs of murderers' and left no doubt that they would not be regarded as lawful combatants.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: By the end of 1940, the Home Guard was established into 1,200 battalions, 5,000 companies and 25,000 platoons. For its primary defensive role, each section was trained and equipped to operate as a single, largely independent 'battle platoon', with an operational establishment of between 25 and 30 men at any one time although, as volunteers would also have full-time jobs, the numbers of volunteers in each section would be around twice that establishment. In the event of an invasion, the Home Guard battle platoons in a town would be under the overall control of an Army military commander and maintain contact with that commander with a designated 'runner' (no Home Guard units were issued with wireless sets until 1942), who would usually be a motorbike owner. Otherwise, the battle platoon was static and would defend a defined local area and report on enemy activity in that area, but it was neither equipped nor expected to join up with the mobile forces of the regular army. Each Home Guard unit would establish and prepare a local strongpoint, from which 'civilians' (non-Home Guard) would be cleared if possible, and aim to defend that strongpoint for as long as possible. It might be forced to retreat towards a neighbouring strongpoint but would not surrender so long as ammunition held out. Most towns of any size would have a number such Home Guard units, each defending its own strongpoint and providing 'defence in depth', which should ideally be sited to offer supporting fire to cover one another and to control road access through the town from all directions.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Each battle platoon had a headquarters section; commander, second in command, runner, and at least one marksman 'sniper' with an M1917 Enfield rifle. The fighting force of the platoon consisted of three squads of around 8 men, each squad having a three-man automatic weapons group (usually with one either of a BAR or Lewis gun) and a rifle/bomb group armed with M1917 rifles, grenades and sticky-bombs, and a Thompson or Sten sub-machine gun if possible. Men without rifles should all have shotguns, if available. The basic tactical principle was 'aggressive defence'; fire would be held until the enemy were within the defensive perimeter of the town in force and they would then be attacked with concentrated firepower of bombs, grenades, shotguns and automatic weapons (as much as possible from above and from the rear), with the object of forcing them into cover close by. Retreating enemy forces would be counterattacked (again preferably from the rear), the automatic weapons group of each squad providing covering fire while the bombing group attacked with grenades, submachine guns and shotguns. As many Germans as possible should be killed, and no prisoners would be taken.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Battle tactics were derived substantially from the experience of Spanish Republican forces although they also drew on the experience of the British Army (and the IRA) in Ireland. The emphasis was on drawing the Germans into fighting in central urban areas at short ranges, where stone buildings would provide cover; lines of communication between units would be short; the Home Guard's powerful arsenal of shotguns, bombs and grenades would be most effective; and German tanks and vehicles would be constrained by narrow, winding streets.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard had a number of secret roles. That included sabotage units who would disable factories and petrol installations following the invasion. Members with outdoor survival skills and experience (especially as gamekeepers or poachers) could be recruited into the Auxiliary Units, an extremely secretive force of more highly trained guerrilla units with the task of hiding behind enemy lines after an invasion, emerging to attack and destroy supply dumps, disabling tanks and trucks, assassinating collaborators, and killing sentries and senior German officers with sniper rifles. They would operate from pre-prepared secret underground bases, excavated at night with no official records, in woods, in caves, or otherwise concealed in all sorts of interesting ways.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: These concealed bases, upwards of 600 in number, were able to support units ranging in size from squads to companies. In the event of an invasion, all Auxiliary Units would disappear into their operational bases and would not maintain contact with local Home Guard commanders, who should indeed be wholly unaware of their existence. Hence, although the Auxiliaries were Home Guard volunteers and wore Home Guard uniforms, they would not participate in the conventional phase of their town's defence but would be activated once the local Home Guard defence had ended to inflict maximum mayhem and disruption over a further necessarily brief but violent period.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: It is a common fallacy that the Home Guard never fired a shot in anger during the whole of the Second World War. In fact, individual Home Guardsmen helped man anti-aircraft guns as early as the Battle of Britain during the summer of 1940. By 1943, the Home Guard operated its own dedicated batteries of anti-aircraft guns, rockets, coastal defence artillery and engaging German planes with their machine guns. They are credited with shooting down numerous Luftwaffe aircraft and the V-1 flying bombs that followed them in the summer of 1944. The Home Guard's first official kill was shot down on Tyneside in 1943. The Home Guard in Northern Ireland also took part in gun battles with the IRA.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: A major new function emerged for the Home Guard after the German bombing campaign, the Blitz, in 1940 and 1941; resulting in large numbers of unexploded bombs in urban areas. Home Guard units took on the task of locating unexploded bombs after raids and, if such bombs were found (often after several months or years), would commonly assist in sealing off the danger area and evacuating civilians. Most Home Guard wartime fatalities occurred in the course of that task. Aside from deaths in accidents, the Home Guard lost a total of 1,206 members on duty to unexploded bombs, air and rocket attacks during the war.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: For the first few weeks the LDV were poorly armed since the regular forces had priority for weapons and equipment. Since the government could not admit the severe shortage of basic armaments for the regular troops in 1940, the public remained deeply frustrated at the failure to issue rifles to the LDV. Rifles were a particular problem, as domestic production of new Lee-Enfield rifles had ceased after the First World War; and in the summer of 1940 there were no more than 1.5 million serviceable frontline military rifles available in total. Contracts had been placed in the UK, Canada and the United States to build new factories for an updated Lee-Enfield model (designated Rifle No. 4), but in 1940, they were still a long way from volume production. The LDV's original role had been envisaged by the army as largely observing and reporting enemy movements, but it swiftly changed to a more aggressive role. Nevertheless, it would have been expected to fight well-trained and equipped troops despite having only negligible training and only weapons such as home-made bombs and shotguns (a solid ammunition for shotguns was developed for that purpose), personal sidearms and firearms that belonged in museums. Patrols were carried out on foot, by bicycle, even on horseback and often without uniforms, although all volunteers wore an armband printed with the letters "LDV". There were also river patrols using the private craft of members.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Many officers from the First World War armed themselves with Webley Mk VI .455 revolvers (officers had been expected to purchase their sidearms privately and retained them in civilian life). There were also numerous private attempts to produce armoured vehicles by adding steel plates to cars or lorries, often armed with machine guns. These improvised vehicles included the Armadillo armoured truck, the Bison mobile pillbox and the Bedford OXA armoured car (some of these makeshift vehicles were also operated by RAF units for aerodrome defense).


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Lord Beaverbrook, the Minister of Aircraft Production, had sponsored the emergency creation of the "Car Armoured Light Standard" (a commercial car body with a simple armoured hull and light machine gun), known as the "Beaverette", for the British armed forces but, to the intense annoyance of the British Army command, he insisted on reserving considerable numbers for Home Guard units guarding key air components factories. LDV units broke into museums, appropriated whatever weapons could be found and equipped themselves with private weapons such as shotguns. Many veterans who had served in the First World War had retained German sidearms as trophies, but ammunition was scarce. Members of the public deposited their sporting rifles at their local police stations, to be used (on loan) by the LDV, and local police forces themselves donated their stocks of military rifles, again on loan, but those expedients provided only around 8,000 rifles (although that number did not include volunteers' use of their own firearms).


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Ex-communist and Spanish Civil War veteran Tom Wintringham, a journalist and key advocate of the LDV and later the Home Guard, opened a private training camp for the LDV at Osterley Park, outside London, in early July 1940. Wintringham's training methods were mainly based on his experience in the International Brigades in Spain. Those who had fought alongside him in Spain trained volunteers in anti-tank warfare and demolitions. Bert "Yank" Levy was one of the chief trainers, and his lectures became the source for a book on guerrilla warfare.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Supplies of small arms to the Home Guard improved radically after July 1940, when the active support of US President Franklin Roosevelt allowed the British government to purchase 500,000 M1917 Enfield Rifles and 25,000 M1918 Browning Automatic Rifles from the reserve stock of the US armed forces, but the very limited initial issue of standard Lee-Enfield rifles was withdrawn as the American arms became available, as were some 25,000 Pattern 14 .303 rifles (the British calibre version of the M1917 Enfield) and 60,000 Canadian Ross rifles. The M1917 Enfield rifles were a more modern design than the Lee-Enfield rifles issued to British regular forces, both harder hitting and more accurate, but were heavier and notably less handy to use. The M1918 Browning Automatic Rifles lacked the bipod stand and carrying handle that the US army had applied in an attempt to convert the weapon into a light machine gun but, when used primarily as a semiautomatic rifle fired from the shoulder (as was advised in Home Guard training manuals), one or two such weapons in a battle platoon could provide formidable additional firepower. In the hands of a trained soldier, each BAR could maintain a firing rate of up to 40 single shots per minute. Furthermore, the British government had placed large commercial orders for Thompson submachine guns, which were issued first to the Home Guard from 1941 onwards (especially to the secret Auxiliary Units). The British Expeditionary Force had lost almost its entire stock of Bren Guns in the Dunkirk evacuation and the regular army initially fell back on prewar and American Lewis Guns as a stopgap; but by the end of 1940, around 14,000 of these American Lewis guns (together with some 4,000 American M1917 Browning machine guns) had been released to the Home Guard. From the perspective of the War Office, this removed weapons using US ammunition from regular army use, and had the further advantage that the three volunteers in the machine gun team would not expect rifles. This model of Lewis gun had been designed to be swivel-mounted in aircraft; before issuing to the Home Guard the fitted spade-handle stock was extended into a crude shoulder stock, and a wooden fore-grip and rigid triangular bipod added.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Within a few months, the Home Guard had acquired proper uniforms and equipment as the immediate needs of the regular forces were satisfied. Special trains were laid on to rush the M1917 rifles and Browning Automatic Rifles to Home Guard units, and by the end of July, all had been distributed. Priority in mid-1940 was given to Home Guard units on the South Coast and Home Counties and those defending key air industry suppliers from air and paratroop attack, and had an invasion happened in September or October, those Home Guard units would have largely been well equipped and armed for a static defence role, the key remaining lack being an effective anti-tank grenade capable of being launched a reasonable distance. After September 1940, the army began to take charge of the Home Guard training in Osterley, and Wintringham and his associates were gradually sidelined. Wintringham resigned in April 1941. Ironically, despite his support of the Home Guard, Wintringham was never allowed to join the organisation himself because of a policy barring membership by communists and fascists.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: An example of a Home Guard exercise is one in the small village of Dundry that defensively overlooks Bristol: the exercise involved the Home Guard units of several neighbouring villages.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Nevertheless, Home Guard members continued to express dissatisfaction with their armaments until 1943 since not all of the 1.5 million members could be provided with their own rifle or pistol. Although large numbers of M1917 Enfield rifles and Browning Automatic Rifles had been purchased for the use of the Home Guard, they had had to be laboriously cleaned of their heavy cosmoline packing grease by the Home Guard units themselves. All the American guns (M1917 Enfield Rifles, BAR, Lewis light machine guns, and Browing M1917 machine guns) used the .30-06 Springfield cartridge, an 0.30 inch round, a type of ammunition totally different from and more powerful than the 0.303 round used by the service issue British Lee–Enfield rifle. A red band was painted around the fore end of the stock of the Enfield and BAR weapons as a warning since a 0.303 round would load but jam the rifle.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Thompson guns used .45 ACP pistol ammunition, again not British Army standard, which was one major reason that the weapons had been turned down for use by the regular army in the first place. Indeed, it rapidly became accepted that any weapons firing US calibre .30 ammunition would go to the Home Guard. Each gun came with an adequate supply of ammunition: 50 rounds for each Enfield, 750 for each BAR and up to 1,000 rounds for the 'Tommy Guns'. However, Home Guard units were commonly not allowed to fire them in practice shooting as until America entered the war, there were no reserve ammunition stocks, which reinforced the impression that they were not frontline weapons.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: For regular shooting practice, the Home Guard mainly borrowed Territorial Army shooting ranges and guns, with limited issue of live .22 and .303 ammunition. From 1942, the Thompson guns (and their ammunition) were increasingly withdrawn to be issued to Commando forces but were replaced by large numbers of Sten submachine guns. For the first time, all Home Guard members could have their own issue firearm.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Home Guard training at Osterly Park had disseminated experience from Spanish Republican forces, in using improvised grenades and bombs in urban warfare against tanks. Two particular weapons were recommended for that purpose: the satchel bomb, a fused explosive charge in a canvas bag, and the Molotov cocktail, a glass bottle containing a mixture of petrol and a gelling agent.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard inherited weapons that the regular army no longer required, such as the Blacker Bombard antitank weapon, and weapons they no longer desired, such as the Sticky bomb. The arsenal also included weapons that could be produced cheaply without consuming materials needed to produce armaments for the regular units such as the Northover Projector, a blackpowder-powered mortar; the No. 76 Special Incendiary Grenade, a glass bottle filled with highly-flammable material and the Smith gun, a small artillery gun that could be towed by a car.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: By late 1940, the Home Guard had amassed 847,000 rifles, 47,000 shotguns and 49,000 machine guns of various kinds. With more than 1,682,000 volunteers, 739,000 men were thus unarmed. There was little improvement in June 1941, when Churchill wrote to the War Office saying that "every man must have a weapon of some sort, be it only a mace or a pike". The civil servants took Churchill at his word and ordered 250,000 pikes from the Ministry of Aircraft Production, each consisting of a long steel tube with an obsolete bayonet welded to the end. When the first reached the Home Guard, there was uproar, and it is thought that none was actually issued.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Captain Godfrey Nicholson, MP, spoke for the Home Guard when he said in the House of Commons that the provision of pikes, "if not meant as a joke, was an insult". Lord Croft, the Under-Secretary of State for War, could have blamed the fiasco on Churchill but defended the decision by saying that the pike was "a most effective and silent weapon". His name was attached to the affair thereafter. The armaments shortage was solved when the first mass-produced Sten submachine guns entered service early in 1942.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 had been supported by prepared irregular units raised from ethnic German populations in western Poland. Linking with the Brandenburg Regiment, troops equipped to fight in the uniforms of their opponents or disguised as civilians. As the German armed services refused to countenance regular troops engaging in such clearly irregular tactics, the Brandenburgers in Poland served under the command of the "Abwehr", German military intelligence. Counterpart tactics were employed in the spring of 1940 in support of the German invasions of Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, but German success in those invasions was more substantially because of the use of paratroopers to seize and hold key defence points behind the front line and to prevent the defending forces from concentrating against the main German ground forces. British public opinion conflated the two tactics and concluded that the rapidity of the German victories in Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands had to be caused by German paratroops linking with a prepared 'fifth column' in each country of Nazi sympathisers and ethnic Germans.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Now that Britain might potentially face invasion, the British press speculated that the German Gestapo had already prepared two lists of British civilians: "The Black Book" of known anti-fascists and prominent Jews who would be rounded up following an invasion and 'The Red Book' of 'Nazi sympathisers' who would support the German invaders as a fifth column. The police and security services found themselves deluged with a mass of denunciations and accusations against suspected fifth columnists. General Ironside, Commander in Chief, Home Forces, was convinced that substantial landowners in the British fifth column had already prepared secret landing strips in South East England for the use of German airborne forces. The Imperial General Staff, spurred on by Churchill, pressed for widespread internment of Nazi- sympathisers.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The government's worst fears were briefly thought to have been confirmed on 20 May 1940. Tyler Kent, a cipher clerk in the US embassy spying for the Germans, was apprehended by MI5. Kent had in his possession a locked ledger of 235 names, which was the prewar membership records of the "Right Club", an anti-war and anti-Semitic association run by the Conservative MP Archibald Maule Ramsay. None of that was made public at the time, but there was widespread public demand that if the names in the 'Red Book' could be obtained by the Security Services, they should be supplied to local Home Guard units in the event of an invasion. Lord Swinton was ordered by Churchill to determine the true extent of the threat and to propose measures to deal with it. Lord Swinton's immediate response was that internment of British nationals with pro-German sympathies should be greatly extended, and Oswald Mosley and other leaders of the British Union of Fascists were interned on 21 May 1940, with some 700 other suspects.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: However, following the loss at sea on 2 July 1940 of the SS Arandora Star, carrying German and Italian internees to Canada, the impracticalities and potential injustices of internment became more apparent, and the public understanding of the fifth column threat changed from being directed towards enemy nationals towards upper and upper-middle class Englishmen. Within a few weeks, the Security Services admitted that it had been unable to confirm any actual instance of organised fifth column activity or even any actual confirmed fifth columnist. Churchill, "with an impressive display of amnesia", asserted in the House of Commons at the end of August 1940 that he had always considered the fifth column threat to be exaggerated, and many of those detained were silently released. From then on, however, the primary official response to fears of fifth column activity was that the names of those for whom there was substantial grounds for suspicion would be added to the 'Invasion List' and that fifth column activity otherwise would be countered by the Home Guard.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: There had been no active Fifth Column actually established by the Germans in Britain in 1940 although numbers of fascist sympathisers might have joined one had they been approached. Nevertheless, Home Guard volunteers continued to assume that a major part of their military role would be to apprehend potential fifth columnists, hunt down and kill any that might mobilise in support of an invasion and prevent their linking up with German paratroops.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The use of German paratroopers in Rotterdam, where "Fallschirmjäger" landed in a football stadium and then hijacked private transport to make their way to the city centre, demonstrated that nowhere was safe. It was widely reported that the paratroops in the Netherlands had been assisted and guided by ethnic German servants in reaching their targets and that was reported as fact by the British ambassador. From July 1940, to counter the threat of an airborne assault, the Home Guard manned observation posts, where soldiers spent every night continuously watching the skies and were initially armed with shotguns but rapidly re-equipped with M1917 rifles.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Official British intelligence reports in 1940 gave credence to the belief that German paratroops routinely engaged in 'dirty tricks' by appearing in the uniforms of opposing forces or masquerading as civilians. Stray parachutists separated from their units were claimed to have feigned surrender to overpower and kill their captors with concealed weapons. In the first (unofficial) published Home Guard training manuals such warnings were re-enforced, with the advice that "the pretenders should be promptly and suitably dealt with" although otherwise official Home Guard guidance would avoid putting 'shoot to kill' orders in writing.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Following the German airborne capture of Crete in May 1941, further advice was rapidly disseminated throughout the Home Guard on defence against paratroops in the light of what was now learned about Fallschirmjäger tactics. In particular, it was noted that in German parachute drops, the paratroops themselves were armed only with a pistol and knife and for a period would be highly vulnerable until they had located and unpacked their separate dropped equipment containers. To disperse British regular forces around the country to provide rapid response cover for potential drop areas would severely deplete the main Home Defence order of battle, but that role appeared tailor-made for local Home Guard units and so throughout 1940 and 1941, defence against paratroops dominated much Home Guard thinking and training. Even after the immediate threat of an invasion had passed, Home Guard units associated with key industrial plants were provided with extra equipment, and Beaverette armoured cars, specifically to defend against possible paratroop raids.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: To spread word in the event of an invasion, the Home Guard set up a relatively simple code to warn their compatriots. For instance, the word "Cromwell" indicated that a paratrooper invasion was imminent, and "Oliver" meant that the invasion had commenced. Additionally, the Home Guard arranged to use church bells as a call-to-arms for the rest of the LDV, which led to a series of complex rules governing who had keys to bell towers, and the ringing of church bells was forbidden at all other times.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: On 22 May 1940, eight days after the formation of the LDV, the War Office announced that 250,000 field service caps were to be distributed as the first part of the uniform of the new force and that khaki brassards or "armlets" were being manufactured, each carrying the letters "LDV" in black. In the meantime, LDV units improvised their own brassards with whatever materials were available. Local Women's Voluntary Service branches were often asked to produce them, sometimes by using old puttees donated by veterans.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The British Army used loose-fitting work clothes called "Overalls, Denim" which were made of khaki-coloured cotton twill fabric and consisted of a short jacket or "blouse" and trousers. They were cut to the same style as and were designed to be worn over the 1938 pattern Battle Dress. It was announced that 90,000 sets of denim overalls would be released from military stores at once and that more would be issued as soon as they could be manufactured.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: On 25 June, Anthony Eden announced in the House of Commons that LDV uniform was intended "to consist of one suit of overalls of design similar to that of battle dress, a field service cap, and an armlet bearing the letters 'L.D.V.'". On 30 July 1940, Eden further announced that the Home Guard (as the LDV had been renamed) would be issued with military boots as supplies became available.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The issue of uniforms proceeded slowly because of shortages and the need to re-equip and enlarge the army following the Fall of France On 14 August, Eden announced that the supply of material to make the denim overalls was insufficient and that regular battle dress would be released to the Home Guard as an interim measure. By the end of 1940, the Cabinet had approved the expenditure of £1 million for the supply of battle dress to the whole force. On 20 August 1940, it was further announced that blankets were being issued and that the intention was to provide the Home Guard with greatcoats.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: As winter approached, there were many complaints from Home Guardsmen who had to patrol or stand sentry without the benefit of a uniform overcoat. Therefore, a large cape made of heavy serge fabric was hastily designed and issued in the interim. There was no prospect of being able to provide sufficient sets of the 1937 Pattern Web Equipment (including belt, ammunition pouches and a haversack) to the Home Guard and so a simplified equipment set made from leather and canvas was produced. Particularly unpopular were the awkward leather "anklets" which were issued in place of the webbing gaiters worn by the army. The lack of provision of steel helmets was keenly felt, especially by those Home Guardsmen required to be on guard duty during the Blitz when the risk of being hit by a shell splinter was high. That situation was only gradually rectified.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: In Northern Ireland, the provincial government had placed the LDV under the control of the Royal Ulster Constabulary; they were known as the Ulster Defence Volunteers, and then the Ulster Home Guard. The police held large stocks of black cloth in reserve, for use by the Ulster Special Constabulary in the event of large-scale civil insurgency. The black cloth was quickly made up into uniforms in the style of the denim overalls by the many clothing factories in the province. The Ulster Home Guard kept their black uniforms until Battle Dress began to be issued in April 1941.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: When the Home Guard was first formed, it had its own rank structure. As a unit of volunteers, it was thought that there should be a system of appointed ranks, with officers who did not hold a King's Commission.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: It was not until November 1940 that it was decided to bring the Home Guard structure into line with the regular army. From February 1941, officers and men were known by regular army ranks except that "Private" was not used until the spring of 1942, when the rank of "Volunteer" was dropped in favour of "Private".


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: After November 1940, officers were granted a King's Commission but were regarded as junior in rank to a regular army officer of the equivalent rank and senior to army officers of a junior rank.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Churchill had recognised that the Home Guard offered a powerful opportunity to promote pro-British sentiments in the United States and hoped that by encouraging US interest and participation in the Home Guard, it might be possible to advance his aspirations to bring the United States into the war against Germany. Although there were also strong practical advantages in directing weapons sourced in the United States towards the Home Guard, rather than the regular army, the prompt issuing of very large numbers of modern American rifles and machine guns to the Home Guard still offered a golden opportunity for British propaganda, which was widely exploited.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The messages sought to be disseminated in the propaganda was that 'Britain can take it' and would never concede to Nazi domination and would be a steadfast ally and also that the Britain being defended was a repository of traditional civility and humanitarian values. One consequence was to establish a representation of the Home Guard through popular films, such as "Mrs. Miniver" and "Went the Day Well", as defending idealised rural English villages, but most Home Guard units were in fact in towns and cities, and most volunteers were industrial workers.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: In November 1940, a committee was formed to collect donations of pistols, rifles, revolvers, shotguns and binoculars from American civilians; to be provided to Home Guard units. Most useful were pistols, especially police issue revolvers, provided from the reserve stocks of US city police departments, many of which went to support Home Guard Auxiliary units.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: On 17 May 1940, the United States Embassy advised the 4000 Americans living in Britain to return home "as soon as possible." A sterner message in June warned "that this may be the last opportunity for Americans to get home until after the war." Many Americans chose to remain, and on 1 June 1940, the 1st American Squadron of the Home Guard was formed in London. They had average strength of 60–70, and were commanded by General Wade H. Hayes.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The US ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy, opposed the mustering of citizens from a neutral power. He feared that in the event of invasion, a civilian squadron would make all citizens of the then still-neutral America living in London liable to be shot by the invading Germans as "francs-tireurs".


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 clearly indicated that an immediate invasion of Britain was no longer to be expected. But initially, the British military command did not expect Soviet resistance to last more than a few months and so the Home Guard needed to be retained in full readiness should the German threat be resumed in greater strength once the Soviets had been defeated. The Home Guard remained in existence manning guard posts and performing other duties to free up regular troops for duties overseas, especially taking over the operation of coastal artillery batteries and anti-aircraft batteries (especially rocket batteries for the protection of key industrial sites). In 1942, the National Service Act allowed for compulsory enrolment in the Home Guard of men aged 42 to 51 years where units were below strength. Meanwhile, the lowest rank within the Home Guard, 'volunteer', was renamed to 'private' to match the regular army usage.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: It was only when the tide on the Eastern Front had definitively turned against Germany in 1943 that the military necessity for the Home Guard began to recede. Even so, both military planners and the public maintained an apprehension that the Germans might launch seaborne or airborne commando raids against targets in Southern England to disrupt the preparations for the Second Front or to assassinate Allied leaders. Following the successful landings in France and the drive towards Germany by the Allies, the Home Guard were formally stood down on 3 December 1944 and finally disbanded on 31 December 1945.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Male members were rewarded with a certificate, bearing the words: "In the years when our Country was in mortal danger, "(name)" who served "(dates)" gave generously of his time and powers to make himself ready for her defence by force of arms and with his life if need be. George R.I." If he had served more than three years and requested it, a member would be awarded the Defence Medal. It was only in 1945 that women who had helped as auxiliaries were recognised with their own certificate.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Anthony Eden summarised the raising and equipping of the British Home Guard during a debate in the House of Commons in November 1940, when he was Secretary of State for War: "No one will claim for the Home Guard that it is a miracle of organisation... but many would claim that it is a miracle of improvisation, and in that way it does express the particular genius of our people. If it has succeeded, as I think it has, it has been due to the spirit of the land and of the men in the Home Guard".


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: General Sir John Burnett-Stuart, the commander of the 1st Aberdeen Battalion, commented that the Home Guard "was the outward and visible sign of the spirit of resistance". The chief constable of Glasgow suggested that criminal elements joined the Home Guard to break, enter and loot during the blackout.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Alison Uttley brought the Home Guard into her "Little Grey Rabbit" series of children's stories with "Hare Joins The Home Guard" in 1942.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: In the wartime Hollywood blockbuster film "Mrs. Miniver" starring Greer Garson, Clem Miniver (the father of the family) provides his own motor launch to form a Local Defence Volunteer 'River patrol'; together with whom he crosses the English Channel in support of the Dunkirk evacuation.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The British wartime propaganda film "Went the Day Well?" starring Thora Hird and made at Ealing Studios in 1942 focuses on how the Home Guard and the population of a village defeat the combined forces of German paratroops and local fifth columnists.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Noël Coward wrote a song in 1943, "Could You Please Oblige Us with a Bren Gun?" that pokes fun at the disorder and shortage of supplies and equipment that were common in the Home Guard, and indeed all of Britain, during the war.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard also played a significant part in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1943 film "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp". In it, the lead character, a career soldier who had retired from the active list, joins the Home Guard and rises to a leadership position in it. He has planned a Home Guard training exercise for the following day; in which he himself would be the designated 'flag target' for capture by the opposite side; but they break the rules and seize him in advance in a Turkish bath. The film celebrates and justifies the Home Guard fundamental philosophy, that in the combat against Nazism all the previous 'rules of war' had been rendered obsolete.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The 1943 British film "Get Cracking" starred George Formby as a Home Guard lance corporal who is constantly losing and winning back his stripe. Formby's platoon is involved in rivalry with the Home Guard sections of the local villages Major Wallop and Minor Wallop. At the end of the film Formby is promoted to sergeant after inventing a secret weapon – a home-made tank.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: In the last of his 'Old Sam' series of monologues, Stanley Holloway wrote of the protagonist of the series, Sam, attempting to join the army at the outbreak of war in 1939. In the series, Sam is a serviceman who fought at the Battle of Waterloo and in the First World War as an adult. In the monologue dealing with World War II Sam is sent to the Home Guard instead of the front line, much to his bemusement, and whilst there finds that his stories of glory are debunked by another character who turns out to be the Duke of Wellington with whom he fought at Battle of Waterloo.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard appears in a scene in the film "Hope and Glory" (1987) when a unit shoots down a wayward barrage balloon and in the 2003 "War Games" episode of the British detective series "Foyle's War", which is set in Hastings during World War II. In 2010, an episode of the "Doctor Who" spin-off "The Sarah Jane Adventures" featured Clyde Langer being transported back to the British coast during World War II, and featured the Home Guard.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The Home Guard was immortalised in the British television comedy "Dad's Army", which followed the formation and running of a platoon in the fictional south coast town of Walmington-on-Sea, and is widely regarded as having kept the efforts of the Home Guard in the public consciousness. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and was loosely based on Perry's own experiences in the Home Guard. Broadcast on BBC Television from 31 July 1968 (The Man and the Hour) to 13 November 1977 (Never Too Old), the sitcom ran for 9 series and 80 episodes in total (74 regular episodes, 3 missing episodes and 3 Christmas specials), plus a radio version based on the television scripts, two feature films and a stage show. The series regularly gained audiences of 18 million viewers and is still repeated worldwide.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: "Dad's Army" focuses primarily on a platoon of Home Guard volunteers ineligible for military service on grounds of age, and as such the series mainly featured older British actors, including Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier, Arnold Ridley and John Laurie (Ridley and Laurie had served in the Home Guard during the war). Among relative youngsters in the regular cast were Ian Lavender, Clive Dunn (who played the elderly Jones), Frank Williams, James Beck (who died suddenly during production of the programme's sixth series in 1973) and Bill Pertwee.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: In 2004, "Dad's Army" was voted into fourth place in a BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom. It had been placed 13th in a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000 and voted for by industry professionals. The series has influenced popular culture in the United Kingdom, with the series' catchphrases and characters being well known. It highlighted a forgotten aspect of defence during the Second World War. The "Radio Times" magazine listed Captain Mainwaring's "You stupid boy!" among the 25 greatest put-downs on TV. A film featuring Bill Nighy, Sir Michael Gambon, Toby Jones and Sir Tom Courtenay was released in 2016.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Not long after the Home Guard had been disbanded, suggestions began to be made that it be revived in the face of a new threat from the Soviet Union. The first official step was a paper by the Director of Military Operations (DMO) in November 1948, which was later incorporated into an Executive Committee of the Army Council (ECAC) report. Suggested roles included countering communist inspired insurrection as well as guarding vulnerable points and anti-invasion duties. In May 1949, a parliamentary Home Guard Working Party was established to consider the issues raised, which resulted in a further report being completed in August 1950.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Although preliminary planning started, such as the identification of suitable battalion commanders, nothing concrete was done because of financial constraints. It was not until Winston Churchill again become prime minister and Minister of Defence in the general election of October 1951 that preparations to revive the Home Guard began in earnest. Churchill predicted that there could be an assault on Britain by "twenty thousand or so" Soviet paratroopers (an assessment of the risk was not requested until March 1953, the outcome of which was that "the Chiefs of Staff believe that the Russians would not contemplate such a step – with or without atomic bombardment...").


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: The speech from the throne on 6 November 1951 included the intention to "take the necessary measures... to re-establish the Home Guard". While the required legislation was in passage through parliament, the Chiefs-of-Staff produced yet another report, outlining the final form that the new Home Guard should take. The force would consist of two categories of battalions; 162 would be "Category A" which would recruit 60 per cent of their projected wartime strength, while 397 "Category B" battalions would be established on an "en cadre" basis, a skeleton staff of trained officers and NCOs which could be expanded in a crisis. The majority of the Category A battalions would be in the south and east of England. The Home Guard Act 1951 received Royal Assent on 7 December. Enrolment started on 2 April 1952. The aim was to recruit 170,000 men in the first year, but by November 1952, only 23,288 had been enrolled, with a further 20,623 men who had joined a "Reserve Roll" (initially called the "Supernumerary Register") for enrolment in an emergency.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: Uniform consisted of standard 1949 pattern battledress and midnight blue beret as worn by the rest of the army. Scottish battalions wore a Balmoral bonnet. A helmet and greatcoat were provided, along with 1937 pattern webbing. Small arms issued to the Home Guard were the Lee-Enfield No 4 Mk 1 rifle and the Mk II Sten sub-machine gun; the Bren gun was the section automatic weapon. Support weapons were the obsolescent PIAT antitank projector, the Vickers medium machine gun and the 2-inch mortar. A detachment of the Home Guard led the British Army section of the State Procession at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: There was much criticism of the cost of the Home Guard, especially the full-time officers, since all battalions had a paid adjutant and quartermaster whose workload was quite limited, especially in Category B units. Accordingly, on 20 December 1955, it was announced that there would be a "reorganisation on a reserve basis". The essence was all battalions would be reduced to a "cadre" basis, and paid staff would have to effect the change before resigning their commissions or transferring to the Reserve Roll by 1 April 1956. A certificate of thanks was issued to those who had served in an active role. Even those reforms were not enough, and on 26 June 1957, John Hare, the Secretary of State for War, announced in parliament that the Home Guard would be disbanded on 31 July, making a saving of £100,000 in that year.


title: Home Guard (United Kingdom)

text: At the height of the Cold War, the Home Service Force was established in 1982, starting with four "pilot companies". Recruitment began in earnest in 1984, but was limited to those who had previously served in the armed forces or reserves. Some 48 HSF units were formed, each hosted by an existing Territorial Army battalion. After the end of the Cold War, disbandment of the force commenced in 1992 as a part of the "peace dividend".