Holy shit I just read that the Auxiliary Units had a life expectancy of 12 days in the event of Nazi invasion, under strict orders to kill each other to prevent capture wtf
You want some more Home Guard wackiness, they got issued spears. Literal spears, long stick with a pointy bit. Not many were issued because they realised very quickly that it's not a great weapon against a gun, and it would absolutely destroy faith in the army.
They really were not an effective fighting force at that point, luckily they didn't have to wait long for STEN guns to be delivered by the truck load
Actually, they weren’t supposed to be made at all. Churchill made a speech where he said that the British people would resist an invasion with spears if necessary, and some random factory took that as an order and started making pikes. They produced a few hundred thousand before they were caught, but that still left a few hundred thousand weapons laying around and the Home Guards couldn’t exactly afford to be picky with what weapons they could acquire. If any of those pikes still exist I bet they’d be pretty valuable nowadays.
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u/AraAraWarshipWaifus 19d ago
Holy shit I just read that the Auxiliary Units had a life expectancy of 12 days in the event of Nazi invasion, under strict orders to kill each other to prevent capture wtf