IN an echo to Looking Back's march back last month to the exercises staged by the men -- and boys -- of the Home Guard's 9th (Blackburn County) Battalion which defended the town's rural fringe during the Second World War, 78-year-old ex-licensee Tom Womack sends his recollections of his days with the fighting force.

As a teenager, he was among the first volunteers for what became the battalion's Cherry Tree company -- when the 'Dad's Army' that sprang up almost overnight in mid-1940 in response to fears of imminent invasion by the Nazis was originally known as the Local Defence Volunteers.

"Volunteering for the LDV was very appealing to us lads," says Tom who then lived at Feniscowles. "Our branch was an empty shop in Cherry Tree village and we each had an armband with 'LDV' stamped on it and one Lee Enfield rifle for the sentry on the front door while the rest of us had pick handles or a long pike.

"It's crazy, I know, but we were actually told that we would have the advantage against any German paratroops as we knew the terrain."

Tom, now of Lostock Hall, near Preston, adds: "A local textile mill manager called Tattersall was made the major in charge of the company and week took turns one a week for guard duty.

"Very quickly, we were issued with army uniforms and I was sent for a week's training to an army camp at Formby and on my return I became the only one in the 9th Battalion with a certificate for using live grenades and anti-personnel mines and was made a corporal."

Tom, who kept a couple of pubs in Preston before his retirement, recalls practices with live ammunition being held in a quarry at Withnell while weekly training was done at Pleasington Playing Fields. Live shooting was also carried out at a rifle range at Hapton to which Cherry Tree's defenders travelled by coach on Sundays.

And he tells of one exercise, in which the company was 'attacking' a farm house -- when he and his colleagues were 'bombed' with bags of flour by a plane from Samlesbury aerodrome.

The company later moved from its original base to Woodlands, a large house on Preston Old Road at Cherry Tree, from where the Home Guard men were dispatched to do weekly guard duties at Samlesbury Aerodrome where they slept in an army Nissan hut. "I think that by this time we had a rifle each, for on one exercise we 'attacked' Blackburn with them. But because we took a train at Mill Hill and came charging out of Blackburn railway station, we were disqualified. It was sour grapes -- but nevertheless it gave us more time to spend in our locals at Cherry Tree, the Beehive Hotel and the Railway Hotel," says Tom who went on to join the Royal Marine Commandos in '43.