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Home Guard Training Mills

BMG50

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
Recently acquired a Mills, most probably a Home Guard Training Mills. Not sure if these were made by a local foundry and had workers served in the Home Guard or it was common for the Home Guard to improvise or what. Anyone have similar training grenades. This one is cast hollow, as no filler plug striker holes pin hole and is quite heavy, not the best of castings but it was good enough for throwing. The grenade is painted or coated in a grey finish similar to the Gibbons grenade.
 

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Hey Chris,

Very interesting - I had one similar but was under the impression it was never finished (factory reject etc) didn't look as rough as yours ........ wasn't aware that it may had been used for Home Guard - was this documented?

Will dig up some pics.

Cheers
Drew
 
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Hi Drew, the early months of the Home Guard when they were called the LDV land defence volunteers. They started out with bread-knifes on broom sticks, no uniform with just an arm band. When they did get some form of gun or equipment at first it was in limited numbers, if they did get a weapon they even had to wait on limited ammunition so they improvised and supplied their own bits for training, a shortage of training grenades where soon made up by locals working in certain industries who could have turned out training aids for the good cause without much hesitation for the war effort until more equipment turned up. I think the Army was holding back on equipment and uniforms for the Home Guard especially very soon after Dunkirk when we had hardly had nothing to fight back on mass until stock got back to normal making up the left behind stuff still in France.
A nice piece that reminds us what desperate times we were in. If the Germans did invade it would have been the only type thing we could thrown back at them, a glorified rock made of cast iron.
 
Here are the photos - interesting comparison!

Enjoy
Cheers
Drew
 

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I would say made for the same reason, as for documentation i would say it would be noted in some HG company diaries on the grounds of training .improvisation. Nice to know that the same formate of casting is similar although mines a bit rough.
 
Dugs these photos up as well - the sectioned base plug has some markings although hard to read.

I really didn't pay too much attention to them - was at one stage going to make lead grenade diving weights using the half cast as a mould

Any thoughts on the crude 1/2 sectioned one?

Cheers
D
 

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Here are the photos - interesting comparison!

Enjoy
Cheers
Drew

When i was a kid i used to find the same as these at a closed ww2 raf airfield near where i lived,i knew where to find them as my father had done the same when he was younger .one of those items i wish i had kept now..
 
These Mills throwing practice grenades are almost a subject on their own. In the Great War they tended to be similar to the No 5 but other shapes emerged some of which were like the Townsend / Gauchet grenades, In 1917 practice grenades shaped like the No 23 MK III and No 36 started to appear. In WW2 local Home Guard units seemed to improvise with locally cast bodies or old examples which had the shoulders removed. Here's a couple of photos showing a range of them.


DSCN3622.jpgDSCN3629.jpg

Both white examples are very heavy castings that weigh more than an actual grenade. The two aluminium examples were made to be filled with sand or concrete. The bottom right grenade in the both photos are probably an ex Home Guard grenades with red paint on.
 
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