A SECRET diary kept by a senior Home Guard officer has revealed the true and unvarnished story of what life was like as part of Britain’s real Dad’s Army during the Second World War.
The daily entries made by Colonel Rodney Foster while he led a platoon of Home Guard soldiers on the Kent coast between 1940 and 1945 are often far removed from the fictional world of Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones and their Walmington-on-Sea colleagues made famous by the popular TV series.
They tell of deaths in German bombing raids, Col Foster and his family being machine gunned by aircraft, ships being sunk in the English Channel and living with constant aerial bombardment.
The fascinating diary was discovered by Northumberland-based antiques dealer and social historian Shaun Sewell, who has turned the material into a newly-published book, The Real Dad’s Army – the War Diaries of Col Rodney Foster.
It is the first diary of a Home Guard soldier ever to come to light, as it was highly illegal to keep diaries on the home front during the Battle of Britain in case the information fell into enemy hands.
The book, which has been published by Penguin and soared to the top of the Amazon rankings last week, has been a labour of love for Mr Sewell, who lives in South Beach, Blyth.
He is the author of a previous book, Tommy’s War, which was based on diaries kept by Glasgow man Thomas Livingstone between 1913 and 1933 and recount life in the city during World War One and beyond.
