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Woodborough’s Heritage

Woodborough, a Sherwood Forest Village, recorded in Domesday

The Woodborough Home Guard

Woodborough’s Home Guard consisted of 30 to 40 men who were too old to fight on the front lines. The head of Woodborough’s Home Guard was Mr Ted Limb, Cynthia Limb’s father-in-law. Cynthia's brother-in-law was a rear gunner on a Lancaster. After the war he went to Christmas Island, which is infamous for its weapons testing (Note 16).

The Home Guard met once a week at the Institute on Roe Lane. They also regularly did exercises. However, they were ill-equipped with only a few rifles and some hand grenades. Once one of them let a round off into the roof while cleaning a rifle, no-one was hurt. This has an uncanny relationship to the popular BBC programme ‘Dad’s Army’ where they are ill-equipped and incompetent. So how useful would the Home Guard have actually have been in an invasion? If they were all as under-trained and ill-equipped as the Woodborough Home Guard, they would not have posed much of a threat against a German invasion.

Acknowledged to Cynthia Limb

We are researching the Woodborough Home Guard during the period of WWII (1939-1945). Does anyone have any information about them, stories or photographs of the Woodborough Home Guard or indeed know anyone who has?

We know that the Home Guard practiced shooting in the old brick works on Bank Hill. So this may jog someone’s memory. But what other activities did they do and who was involved?

Please email John Hoyland at: enquiries@woodborough-heritage.org.uk

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