"Look, Duck, Vanish!": magicians in the Home Guard
On the evening of 14 May 1940, four days after Germany invaded France and the Low Countries, newly appointed Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, gave a speech on the B.B.C. Home Service:
“Since the war began, the government have received countless enquiries from all over the kingdom from men of all ages who are for one reason or another not at present engaged in military service, and who wish to do something for the defence of their country. Well, now is your opportunity. We want large numbers of such men in Great Britain, who are British subjects, between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five…to come forward and offer their services…The name of the new force which is now to be raised will be ‘The Local Defence Volunteers'".
And so, the L.D.V. (later renamed the 'Home Guard' by Winston Churchill) was formed. Within 24 hours, a quarter of a million men signed up.
Home Guard armband
(Source: Imperial War Museum)
The L.D.V. – or Home Guard – consisted mainly of those too old or too young to join the forces (or those in reserved occupations, such as teachers, bank workers and railwaymen). Their official role was to observe and report enemy activity (to the Regular Army), rather than to fight. This led to the nickname ‘Look, Duck and Vanish’. Later the Home Guard’s primary objective was “to offer stout resistance…and to meet any military emergency until trained troops can be brought up”.
Home Guard service was a part-time role, which volunteers (later conscripts) carried out in addition to their normal occupations. They weren’t paid and to begin with they didn’t have weapons … so some made their own.
At its peak, the British Home Guard was nearly two million men strong; with probably double that number serving in it at some point during the war. Hundreds, probably thousands of magicians - hobbyist, semi-professional and professional - wore the uniform of the Home Guard between 1940 and 1944.
Dad's Army, main cast members
(Source: B.B.C.)
Although they were often mocked, and the stereotype reinforced by the classic B.B.C. comedy, Dad's Army (1968-1977), most of the Home Guard were brave and patriotic men. Indeed, what started as an improvised band of volunteers, had grown by 1942 into a conscripted, disciplined and well-equipped force.
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One early Home Guard volunteer was magician Peter Warlock. Like Captain Mainwaring, Warlock was a bank manager in his ‘day job’. Outside of work, Warlock was a prolific magic performer, journalist, researcher, historian, committee member, editor, magazine publisher, and inventor.
“With the outbreak of WW2 in 1939 Peter joined the Home Guard as, at the time, he was too old for general armed service. Naturally, he became involved with entertainments, and was responsible for staging many star-studded shows for the troops. However, in 1942, Peter was drafted into the Army where he served as an officer in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps," recalled Warlock's wife in One Hundred by Warlock (1996).
Peter Warlock, bank manager, Home Guard soldier and magic statesman
(Source: Warlock, Elizabeth. One Hundred by Warlock)
John Gardner, later to become an acclaimed English spy and thriller novelist, also joined the Home Guard, at the age of just thirteen.
“It is amazing to me now that a few weeks before my fourteenth birthday, in 1940, I found myself instructing men three times my age in the mysteries of the Lewis Gun and I was to become one of the many Private Pikes in the Home Guard – well under age of course but I got around it by being a drummer in the Home Guard Band”.
When he reached 17, at the end of 1943, Gardner volunteered for aircrew duties in the Fleet Air Arm, but was told he would have to wait for around eight or nine months. Instead, as an obsessive amateur and semi-professional magician, he auditioned for the American Red Cross Entertainments Department and became a professional, “travelling around the country with a group of singers, elderly comedians and instrumentalists performing at the many U.S. Hospitals which started to fill with wounded and dying after D-Day”. Later, he transferred to the Royal Marines and served in the Middle and Far East.
John Gardner, Home Guard soldier, WW2 magician and acclaimed novelist
(Source: Creative Commons Licence)
Another magician to join the Home Guard was talented amateur magician (and one-time President of the Northern Magic Circle), Bernard Brown. Brown had joined the railway on leaving school at the age of 14. When he turned 18, he was released by the railway to serve in the later part of World War One as an officer, in charge of bombs and ammunition. He was still working with the railway when World War Two came around.
As an ex-Regular Army officer with a career in the railway behind him, Brown was appointed as a lieutenant in the railway company of his local Home Guard. He was based in Bletchley, home to the Bletchley Park, the former top-secret centre for World War Two codebreakers.
Bernard Brown, railway guard, magician and Home Guard officer
(Source: Milton Keynes Heritage Association)
Magicians who were Home Guard officers or soldiers, such as Warlock, Gardner and Brown, and non-serving magicians, would often perform shows for Home Guard unit socials, or for community events organised by the Home Guard; entertaining the war-weary and keeping up morale.
Magician performing for a children's party organised by the Hertfordshire Home Guard
(Source: Author's collection)
Captain Reg Salmon was also a magician. The Demon Telegraph (magic magazine) described Salmon as "one of the most brilliant amateur magicians in the country, a performer good enough to be a professional in every sense of the word...Reg puts over big stuff as well as smaller effects, all with equal aplomb and breeziness, and he is assisted by his Three Blonde Bombshells...On the last occasion that we saw him perform, he presented a perfect 'Sawing a Woman in Half' illusion, which impressed us as being almost the best we ever saw and was very convincing indeed". It added that he regularly put on grand shows of magic in Southgate, in support of the local A.R.P. services.
A still from the television programme 'Stars in Your Eyes' featuring Reg Salmon [not shown] and his assistants performing the Disembodied Princess Illusion (January 1947)
(Source: Keystone)
When not attending to his Home Guard duties, Salmon was the Joint Managing Director of the UK business of the world-famous firm of Fox Photos Ltd. An American company, Fox Photos was the largest mail order photo-finishing business in the world. Reg Salmon himself was an accomplished and well-known photographer, often carrying out some daredevil photo shoots.
Reg Salmon, carrying out a photo shoot in a crate dangling from a crane, with St. Paul's Cathedral, London in the background (circa 1930s).
(Source: Pinterest)
Major Lionel H. Branson, a career officer with the Indian Army, who'd fought in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) during World War One and later commanded a regiment in India, was another magician to join the Home Guard. After retiring from the Army, he'd taken up magic full-time, becoming a Vice President of The Magic Circle. When World War Two came around - and too old to serve again - he gladly answered Mr. Eden's appeal for volunteers and handed in his name the following morning.
"I was given a quarter of Winchester to defend with 167 men and boys whom I recruited within fourteen days, and we were called the Stanmore Platoon ... We were given six Canadian rifles and 120 rounds of ammunition to defend my district. A few shot-guns and one or two revolvers completed our lethal weapons, with of course my catapult - a beautiful weapon."
Major (ret'd) Lionel H. Branson
(Source: Public domain)
While the Home Guard was set-up to protect the United Kingdom from an invasion that never came, some of its members did suffer injury or die on duty.
Magic Circle member, Leonard F. Matthews, joined the Home Guard in 1940. His obituary appeared in the club's in-house journal, The Magic Circular:
"It is with deep regret that we have to record the death by enemy action of Mr Matthews, a veteran of the last war. In a recent air raid, Mr. Matthews was on duty with the Home Guard, putting out incendiary bombs, when a high explosive bomb blew off one of his legs. His robust constitution promised to pull him through the severe and trying illness which followed, but the loss of blood and shock proved too much and he succumbed to his injuries on the 26th April 1941".
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Sixty percent of the Home Guard went on to join the armed forces, so many of the younger magicians who wore the Home Guard armband, like Gardner, saw active service overseas, further contributing to the war effort.
After D-Day in June 1944, the invasion threat disappeared and the Home Guard was no longer needed. A steady decline began, until it was ‘stood-down’ at end of 1944 before finally vanishing in December 1945.
Do you know of other magicians who served in the Home Guard? Let me know and I'll add them to the article!
Related article: Leslie Lambert: enigmatic Bletchley Park code-breaker, a blog about the many lives of Leslie Lambert and his role in cracking the Enigma code. Blog link.
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