The HG Officer killed was Capt Frederick Joseph Willy of 3 Platoon, Newtown (Poole ,Dorset) Home Guard as shown in the attached View attachment 133374
Here's an account by a Coldstreamer which, I think, relates to the same incident. Seems to be another version of that 'quisling' theory: maybe all sorts of theories were circulating at the time. (I should add that I couldn't find any CWGC listings relating to any of the Guards regiments on 13/04/1942.) Teal, George Ernest (Oral history) (18698) Reel 3, from about 2.10 minutes In 1942 we went on Salisbury Plain. Oh it would have been 5 or 6,000 people on a big hillside, including a certain general. We had to watch Spitfires attacking tanks on the bottom, on the bottom of this valley below us, you know, all of us all lined up like that. And somebody says: “Eh this bugger’s coming straight at us.” I says: “Nah he’ll take off, he’ll go on top of us.” He says: “What?!” We see these twinkling - like eight machine guns firing straight at us, straight at us. This ain’t a fairy tale. I think they killed about 120 of us maybe, you know, people were going down all over the spot. There was 120 dead, you see. And we did not realise it was a Polish pilot who’d done that, who’d been blackmailed into it and he was after this general. And this general was the one that was earmarked for the Invasion. I’ve just forgotten his name now, it’s slipped my mind, it’s a long while ago for an old fella to remember. But he’d been blackmailed and he turned off and he headed back over the Channel, to France, you know. But however, he was shot down and he went into the Channel, somewhere like that. Anyone want proof of this, ask the Ministry of Defence about this attack, in 1942, on soldiers, especially the Guards Armoured Division. 1942. How close did the bullets come to you? Very near and they badly wounded this general. I’m trying to remember his name. He was about to become a Field Marshal. He was the boy really that they’d earmarked to take charge of the British of the Invasion but he didn’t do it then of course. Did you lose any comrades? Yes, several of them. Yeah, several of them. From your company? Oh yes, aye, from my own platoon, from the signal platoon, well, I was tank troop then, yes. That’s facts is that, not fiction, facts. I’ll show it you before you go anyway.
I'm afraid this is massively exaggerated and 'heard down the pub'-type rumours - it wasn't a Polish pilot at all. The correct version is here: Imber friendly fire incident - Wikipedia
There was another big friendly fire incident at an artillery demonstration in 1941. Brigadier H J Parham was demonstrating how easy it was to control the fire of all the battery in a division using the procedures that, with some modifications, would be the basis of the concentrated fire of the British and commonwealth artillery in the second half of the war. There as a flaw in the method for applying corrections to the fire of batteries sited in different gun positions, tragically exposed when a round of gunfire landed on the VIP spectators. General W "Monkey" Morgan, a veteran of the VC action at Le Cateau was one of the casualties. Not sure if this made the press.
