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There has been a long tradition
of amateur military units in the U.K., manned by volunteers.
Whilst nothing had ever been seen on the scale represented
by the Home Guard in WW2, volunteer units also existed
in the Great War which ended on November 11th, 1918.
Little more than 21 years later, volunteers were again
having to offer themselves for service. Some of them
were the same men who had been associated directly
or indirectly with the Volunteer units of 1914-1918.
Here is an image of the Knowle
and Dorridge Volunteers. One of the men was
a soldier serving in an active regiment of the Regular
Army - about the only one shown lacking a personal
weapon - the reason for whose presence on the picture
we shall never know. The others were presumably almost
all regular members of the Volunteer unit. Can anyone
identify any of the faces? Apart from the young private,
did any of them become stalwarts of the Home Guard,
in Knowle and Dorridge or elsewhere?
(Higher definition images of individual men are
available on request).
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