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Even though the heavy bombing of British cities was yet to come the Ministry of Home Security was developing and producing training and operations memoranda. The attached file is from May of 1940 and over four pages defines the roles of the police, fire services and ARP services as well as creation of incident posts for air raid incidents. Within a few short years a whole booklet of 76 pages would be produced regarding the managing of Air Raid incidents (Civil Defence Training Manual 4 - Incident Control - 1st Edition. November 1943). 
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I previously believed these Shelter Marshal armbands made by R. Crook & Co. of Kew Bridge were reproductions. Following research I now believe they are genuine items. The company made armbands in the 1930s for a lot of roles in the motor racing sport. It follows that they them shifted to making armbands for various local authorities during the war.
The manufacturing style of the armbands is identical to those produced in the 1930s. Ensuring messages got through to Report & Control Centres was essential and despatch riders were utilised by every Civil Defence region for this purpose. This photo shows nine riders and several motorbikes. They have the standard battledress but one gentleman has no regulation trousers. It appears the only insignia is a CD breast badge and an area marking.  WW2 Civil Defence Despatch Riders Below are two fake Air Raid Shelter signs currently up on eBay. The seller has dozens of shedmade wooden signs from all sorts of areas across Europe (British and German). He adds spurious details on provenance - usually about salvaging or rescuing the signage from a factory in such-and-such a year - all utter bollocks. I'm amazed anyone would fall for such blatant fakes but it appears he's regularly selling this garbage.
This officer in the Wardens' Service has placed his rank insignia on his epaulettes. The prescribed location was just below the shoulder title. Alas, there's no area marking on the uniform but the photograph has a photographer's studio address in Barnsley. It could be that CD officers in that particular area took to wearing their rank insignia on their epaulettes.  WW2 Civil Defence Officer With Peculiar Rank Location |
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