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Britain Prepares. Last week Britons grimly prepared their last-ditch defenses for such an onslaught. Parliamentarians carrying gas masks passed through barbed-wire entanglements and past sandbagged guard posts in order to reach Government buildings. Motorists were cautioned to remove spark plugs from their cars when parking so that Nazi invaders could not use them. An 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew was imposed on all foreigners, Americans and Frenchman included. Motor launches between 30 and 100 feet in length were requisitioned by the Admiralty for coastal patrol. Police swooped down on firearms dealers, gunsmiths and pawnbrokers throughout Britain and confiscated their guns and pistols. A new "treachery bill," designed to put teeth in the present treason law dating from the 14th Century, was rushed through Parliament, which voted dictatorial powers to the Government (see p. 29).
War Secretary Anthony Eden's call for minutemen to join the L. D. V. (Local Defense Volunteers) was responded to by 500,000 embattled Britons between 17 and 65, who signed up as parashooters. Elderly gentlemen shouldering elaborate sporting rifles marched to recruiting stations before dawn to be first in line, and a gouty colonel from Epsom declared, "Dammit, sir, I would be pleased to patrol the Derby Race Course." The Duke of Atholl's private Army of 250 kilted gamekeepers and farmers at Blair Castle enrolled in a body. The rifle squad assigned the task of shooting wild animals that might escape from the London Zoo during an air raid was told to add 'chutists to its list. Issued old Army uniforms or khaki denim overalls 28 and overseas caps to give them military status, Britain's minutemen, nicknamed "Last-Ditch Volunteers," patrolled moors and downs, while flying columns in radio-equipped cars prowled the highways. Like their compatriots who colonized America, farmers ploughing in overalls kept their rifles close at hand.
Criticizing the L. D. V., onetime War Secretarv Leslie Hore-Belisha declared: "The new scheme is amateurish." Amateurish or not, the last-ditch volunteers were as determined a group of defenders as ever faced a frontier, and a pilot of an R. A. F. plane who made a forced night landing in a field near North Baddesley. Hampshire found himself immediately surrounded by grim-faced farmers armed with shotguns, scythes and pitchforks. In Ulster three R. A. F. aviators were fired upon and wounded when parashooters mistook them for Nazi air visitors.
Squaring off to meet invasion, the British Army High Command made its chief defense strategist, hulking, vigorous General Sir Edmund Ironside, Commander in Chief of the Home Forces. General Sir Edmund, who sucks mint bullets (English for jawbreaker) while working up battle plans and as a secret agent once entered the German Army and won a medal for valor, surrendered his post as Chief of the Imperial Staff to an offense specialist in tank and artillery warfare, Lieut. General Sir John Greer Dill.