Dismiss!

In the wintry streets of Britain's towns & villages, 2,000,000 men of the Home Guard paraded for the last time. Londoners lined three miles of streets to cheer the final march past. The "little man's" army, having waited four and a half years for an enemy who never came, finally "stood down" last week in a blaze of glory and gratitude. From the Home Guard's Colonel in Chief, King George VI, came a solemn tribute: "... A force . . . mighty in courage and determination." Said Foreign Minister Anthony Eden, the man who called the Guard to arms when the Germans were just across the "drink" and likely to come over any day: "Britain will never forget that in our dark hour, when your numbers were far in excess of your equipment, it was the U.S. which alone gave us the weapons."

Less rhetorically, the disbanding H.G.s talked over old times in pubs and clubs: the early days when they drilled with broomsticks, blunderbusses, even pikes and halberds; the later days of spit-&-polish parades, beach and battle maneuvers; the outlandish lessons in stabbing, stunning, strangling; the long, nodding nights of standing guard.

The Home Guard never got its chance to preserve Britain from invasion, but it did give Britons something new in military democracy. Many a titled Home Guard had taken orders from his grocer or gardener, and liked it.

The H.G.s might go back to their umbrellas and bowlers, but the tunics and tin hats would always be hanging in the cupboard, just in case.

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