Free The Invasion of 1950 by Christopher Nuttall Page B

Sergeant Henry Wilt, staring out to sea. He’d been born inland and had only seen the sea as a child on a visit to relatives in Poole, where he’d visited a beach and almost drowned. “What’s the point of us being here?”
     
    Wilt gave him a mischievous look. “Because the Home Guard is supposed to be a countrywide organisation and Felixstowe cannot be left out of any preparations for defence,” he said, carefully. “If something should happen here, the army will expect us to serve as the first respondents to the crisis and deal with it.”
     
    Jackson looked at him sharply. “And just what might happen here?”
     
    “There was a major riot two years ago,” Wilt said, as they walked back towards the barracks. “There was a strike protesting something, and a boss sent in a group of hired thugs and…well, dockyard workers are tough, so they beat hell out of the thugs and then rioted. I think it required an army battalion to put an end to the rioting and a lot of people got hurt.”
     
    Jackson looked around the dockyard complex. It was massive, with several large slips for massive freighters and a small MTB and destroyer base down the coast, providing a small base for the Royal Navy. Inland of the slips there were hundreds of warehouses and an entire rail line dedicated to moving cargo out of the dockyards and into Britain; behind that, he could see the town of Felixstowe, shimmering slightly in the early morning mist.  But the workers themselves looked thin and scrawny, the result of rations that were somehow never enough to keep themselves going.  And, as they were in a protected occupation, they couldn't even find work elsewhere.
     
    “I can see why they rioted,” he said, as they passed by a massive freighter which was unloading a massive pile of crates, dockyard workers coming up to transport them away from the ship and towards the railway station. A set of trucks drove past and they moved out of the way, heading towards the gate; the entire dockyard was surrounded by a fence and a guarded gatepost. “Are there any security problems here?”
     
    Wilt nodded towards a line of pubs, inside the fence. “We get German crewmen coming here and sometimes they get into fights,” he said. “There’s quite a lot of Polish workers here, people whose families fled Poland before the Germans invaded, and they don’t get on too well with the Germans. More seriously, we have had some spying incidents out here, although the Home Guard hasn’t actually done much apart from providing manpower if it’s needed.”
     
    They passed through the gates and began walking towards the Home Guard barracks. They were smaller than a regular army barracks; according to Home Guard regulations, one Company was supposed to be ready for anything, and a second Company was supposed to be in reserve, but the other part-time soldiers were permitted to get on with their lives in-between serving their time on guard duty. There was a great deal to guard at the barracks: apart from providing sleeping space and offices for the senior officers of the unit, it also stored the unit’s weapons and equipment.
     
    He grimaced. Junior officers in the Home Guard had been pressing for the soldiers to be allowed to take their weapons home with them so that they could be ready at any moment, if there was a problem. It hadn’t been considered politically possible, not with so much economic turmoil sweeping over the country, and it meant that the Home Guard had to report to their barracks before getting their weapons. If something did happen, they should have plenty of time to respond, but it worried him.
     
    “Ah, Captain Jackson,” Colonel Felton-Smith said, as Jackson entered his office. “What did you make of the docks?”
     
    “I think we really need more patrols round there,” Jackson said, honestly. “If there are security issues we need to tighten security and ensure that no one comes in or out of the docks unless we know who they