Photographs of the Home Guard wearing their full equipment and carrying rifles are always fascinating and a great source of inspiration to those of us involved in living history as they provide something we can study and replicate. Unpublished photographs of units in full battle order are not easy things to find and although there are plenty of Home Guard photographs out there, most have already been printed and reprinted many times over the decades. It is therefore very pleasing to be able to bring you four new photographs today that show one Home Guard unit on parade with pouches, webbing and rifles that I do not believe will ever have been published before.

Sadly I do not know where these images were taken, the clarity is tantalising as one can almost make out the shoulder insignia but not quite well enough to read it. Here we can see a small section of men wearing battledress, with home guard pouches, respirators on their chest and leather anklets. On their heads they wear standard steel helmets:

The same men can be seen standing at ease with their P14 or P17 rifles clearly visible- sadly it is not possible to make out any red bands on the stock to determine which is which. Each rank has a corporal at the end closest the camera:

In the third image the men can be seen ready to march off, with their rifles at the slope and led by a warrant officer with pace stick and FS cap:

Finally we have a more relaxed photograph showing some of the sergeants of the unit, note also the home guard haversacks being worn on the back:

This unit was clearly quite well equipped as all the men have the correct webbing, rifle and equipment and my guess is the images date from 1941 or 1942 when Home Guard units were at their best manned and equipped.