Wednesday 3 February sees the Yorkshire premiere of Dad’s Army: the Movie, drawn from the much-loved series that has become part of our television history.
It is the classic mix of pride, humour and nostalgia set against the backdrop of WW2, with each of the characters giving their all – whatever that happened to be – to their country.
So how far from the truth was Dad’s Army? A short film extract from a much longer amateur film made by and about the Thornton Home Guard, Bradford, over a period of years, from 1941 – 1944, and now preserved in the vaults of the Yorkshire Film Archive.
It charts the birth of what was to become the Home Guard, but started life as the Local Defence Volunteers – the LDV, colloquially known as the Look, Duck and Vanish.
We know this because Eddie North, a member of the Home Guard who also features in this film, tells us exactly how it was: the drills with the wooden rifles, the training that never quite went to plan, ‘well, it was a bit of a lark for the younger ones.’
In the film we can see how close to the truth Dad’s Army is: men gathering together, making do with whatever they had to hand before the right equipment arrived, keeping watch for any signs of the enemy, staying out of sight and learning all the techniques of camouflage, and preparing for what could be done if and when the invasion became a reality.
The film is beautifully shot, in colour, which would have been expensive at the time, and given the circumstances, it is remarkable that it was made in the first place, and even more remarkable that it has survived the test of time.
Now it has been preserved and digitised by the Yorkshire Film Archive, and people can see the real Dad’s Army – the men who were there at the time – and what is astonishing is that when we watch it, it really is so close to what we see in those television episodes.
As Eddie North tells us “You’ve got to remember, it was after Dunkirk, and we were back on our heels, we were expecting the enemy to come across. It’s a good job they didn’t, because there wasn’t very much we could have done about it.”
