Home Was Never Like This

The 168-year-old Massachusetts Committee of Public Safety organized the militia that fought at Lexington, and it is still going strong. In World War II it has pioneered in civilian defense.

To find out how militia methods have changed since the Revolution, two Committee members, Lawyer John K. Howard and H. Wendell Endicott (Endicott-Johnson shoes), visited Britain last year. They were impressed by the Home Guard School conducted by Guerrilla Tom Wintringham for the British War Office (TIME, May 25). Last week came the result: on the velvet-lawn-and-colonial-brick campus of Middlesex School at Concord, Major General Sherman Miles, Commander of the First Corps Area, abetted by the Committee, opened a tactical school. Purpose: to teach guerrilla-warfare methods to State Guards. The Commandant is Lawyer Howard, now a lieutenant colonel.

Orphans of the Storm. The new State Guards have been orphans of the emergency, without central organization, without training, often without guns or even uniforms. Yet even experts agree that a home guard has a real function. A modern enemy attacking a coast lands not only on the shore, but far inland. Defense must be in a depth, not of 30 or 40 miles, but of 200 or perhaps 400. To protect the whole area with an army is prohibitively expensive in men and materiel. Only a civilian force of guerrillas naturally spread throughout the area, can take the sting out of surprise and speed until the regulars get there. The school at Middlesex may lead, as in Britain, to an integrated Home Guard under the War Department.

The Yank Is Cunning. Ace instructor at the School is Bert ("Yank") Levy, guerrilla virtuoso, onetime Wintringham assistant, and author of Guerrilla Warfare (TIME, Mar. 16). Levy is a dramatic, 120-pound, black-haired expert on the art of unmodified murder whom the British regard as a delightful combination of Daniel Boone and Jack the Ripper. His muscular nose was flattened and given a starboard twist in either World War I, a Nicaraguan revolution, the Spanish War or in one of his many personal encounters in civilian life. Levy specialties, as taught in both Britain and the U.S.: use of incendiaries, bombs and grenades, harassing enemy communications, and tactics such as: delaying armored vehicles with infantry, small improvised weapons, hand-to-hand combat, scouting, counter-parachute-troop action, street fighting.

The course lasts a week. By the end of it, the first batch of 76 earnest, middle-aged Guardsmen were pretty well bushed, because days began at 6:30 a.m. and went without letup until 10 p.m.

The first two or three days were devoted chiefly to scouting under R. W. Spiers of the Boy Scouts of America. (The famed Boy Scout Manual is a rewrite of Baden-Powell's Aids to Scouting, written to train British soldiers in guerrilla fighting against the Boer Commandos.) They played so-called "kid" games, which are really excellent exercise in stalking an enemy. In one game two lines of men scrounge around on their hands & knees over rough ground, each side trying to spot the other first. When one man sees another on the other side, he shouts "I see you," and scores a point. Capt. H. F. "Tiny" Taylor of the Connecticut State Guard weighs 280 pounds. After navigating 200 feet with his tail up, he yelled in desperation: "See me, for Christ's sake, see me!"

Gut, Garrote and Go. Boy Scouting was followed by Levy's guerrilla instruction. His demonstration of shimmying along the ground to throw a hand grenade reminded one fascinated spectator of "watching a black snake slither through the grass." His illustrated lectures on garroting, hatpin stabbing and gouging were completely free of squeamishness, showed that guerrilla fighting has nothing in common with Marquis of Queensberry rules.

Levy's faith in Home Guards is complete. Said he of Britain last spring: "Our work there is done. England can't be invaded. The Hun can't land any planes in England without facing hundreds of men ready to get him. In fact, Great Britain can release 3,000,000 men from England for an invasion of the continent, and do it with full safety." But last fortnight came a request from the British War Office for him to return, give a new series of lectures on his grisly specialty. He will go in six weeks, when school ends.

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