Book description
1941. Britain is under some of the heaviest air raids of the
Second World War. Concerns about Nazi paratroopers landing in Britain
and invading take hold in the hearts of the British citizenry. The
Home Guard has been mobilised to defend against airborne assault and
it needs training.
Yank Levy is brought in to Osterley Park to teach guerrilla
warfare, from practical experience in the Spanish Civil War. Yank
trains soldiers of the Home Guard how to use surveillance, defend
against tanks and armoured vehicles, how to fight in towns and across
country and against a well-supplied, highly-trained and mobile
occupying force. His book, Guerrilla Warfare offers such sound
advice as: Whether you go to a tea-party or to work on your
allotment take your rifle with you. Don t leave it downstairs for a
German to grab if he enters the house and '
Your motto should always be: Finish them! Then a quick get-away,
and another ambush some place else
Bert Levy was born in Canada in 1897, moving shortly afterward to the
USA. When asked about his education he answers: 'my real education was
in the school of hard knocks'. He was a deck hand or stoker in the
Merchant Service in 1916 and early 1917. He returned to seafaring in
1939 and early 1940 but when there were no submarines about, the sea did
not interest him. His own notes read: 'Mexico, 1920-1, and some
gun-running; Nicaragua, 1926, some gun-running'. He served in the
International Brigade in Spain, joining early in 1937, and becoming an
officer in the machine-gun company of the British Battalion. He was
captured and spent six months in General Franco's prisons. He joined the
staff of the Osterley Park School for the Home Guard in August, 1940,
also lecturing to the Home Guard at the War Office No. 1 School.
