FOLLOWING an appeal for information in last week's Times, one observant reader has been able to identify a photo of the Home Guard.

The photo (below), from the archive of local historians Mike and Hilary Wreford, is of Belstone Home Guard taken circa 1940. Initially it was thought to be a picture of Okehampton Home Guard but reader Chris Walpole of Belstone identified it as a picture that appeared in The Book of Belstone published in 2002.

The full line up is as follows: On the back row, Bill Crocker, John Reed, Bill Garry, Jack Reddaway, Cyril Moorlock, Harry Brown. Front row, Hubert Kelly, John Osborne, Major Jackson, Alfie Bullen, Dennis Ash.

One of the group's main jobs was to patrol Fatherford Viaduct.

Bill Crocker, on the far left on the back row of the photo, lived from 1912 to 2000. He was a bellringer at Belstone church for 60 years and an Okehampton Range clearer for 50 years, acting as head ranger for the last 18 years. During the Second World War he continued his range clearing duties and was quoted as saying: 'Sometimes I had to stay out overnight on the moor. This time I was out at Dinger Tor and was able to sleep in an officer's sleeping bag on a blow-up mattress — real luxury it was'.

Jack Reddaway, third from the right on the back row, was a well-known farmer and moorman on north Dartmoor whose son Michael and grandson James continue the tradition. Jack was Lord of the Belstone Manor from 1990 until his death in 2006.  In his youth Jack helped at The Mid Devon Granite Works, his father's stoneyard in the centre of the village.

Cyril Moorlock, second from the right on the back row, had various Home Guard memories, including losing his bayonet on the village green, the group getting lost between Cullever Steps and Taw Marsh, the grenade that exploded on top of a wall at Watchet instead of safely on the other side and the time the man guarding Birchy Lake gate was forgotten about until after dark — the war game had ended at 2pm.

Cyril ran the village shop in Belstone for 40 years from 1925. He owned one of the first cars to appear in the village, an American 'Willys-Knight'.  As a youngster he remembered gun carriages passing through the village to take officers who lived in Belstone up to Okehampton Camp for their lunch.  In later life he was a talented oil painter, and set designer for Belstone Players' productions. He lived from 1907 to 2000.

Operational from 1940 until 1944, the Home Guard nationwide comprised 1.5-million volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service, usually owing to age — hence the nickname 'Dad's Army'. They acted as a secondary line of defence in case of invasion by the forces of Nazi Germany.

The Home Guard guarded the coastal areas of the United Kingdom and other important places such as airfields, factories and explosives stores. According to Mr Wreford there were a number of detachments in the Okehampton area drawn from workplaces such as Meldon Quarry and the West Devon Electricity Supply Company as well as from the town and surrounding villages themselves — Belstone included.