CITIZEN soldiers and their efforts to protect Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire are being highlighted in a new exhibition.

Dad’s Armies: The Amateur Military Tradition starts at the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Museum tomorrow.

New displays have been created with the Buckinghamshire Military Museum Trust (BMMT).

Museum director Ursula Corcoran said she was delighted to join forces with the BMMT for the first time.

She added: "This is something of a departure for us but some of the BMMT's trustees are volunteers here so we do have close links.

"The exhibition will focus on the early militia and feature uniforms, drums, diaries and recruitment posters."

Ian Beckett, secretary of the BMMT, said: "We all associate Dad’s Army with the home guard of the Second World War but this was only the last in a long line of amateur citizen soldiers brought into existence for supplementary defence against invasion.

"Such local and amateur soldiers pre-dated the establishment of a standing army in the 17th century for military obligations were first imposed on citizens in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

"This new joint exhibition between the Soldiers of Oxfordshire Trust and the Buckinghamshire Military Museum Trust is devoted to the story of these local auxiliary forces - the militia, yeomanry and volunteers - and to their successors in two world wars - the volunteer training corps and the Home Guard.

"With regular soldiers policing an empire, the auxiliaries were the real link between army and society.

"They helped to keep order before police forces were established and bore the brunt of popular anti-militarism, not least because the militia was the only part of the army raised by conscription before 1916.

"But they were also pillars of the community and part of the very fabric of county life."

The Oxfordshire Home Guard Re-enactment Society will call in at the museum tomorrow as the exhibition is launched to give visitors an idea of what it was like to be part of 'Dad's Army' in the 1940s.

The museum in the grounds of the Oxfordshire Museum in Park Street opened during the summer of 2014, with the Princess Royal officially cutting the ribbon in September.

SOFO highlights two county regiments, the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars and the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry.

The collections contain over 3,500 objects and 7,500 archive items dating back to the late 18th century.

They reflect the local regiments’ involvement in major conflicts such as the War of American Independence, the Peninsula War, the Boer Wars, and the two world wars, together with less well known events such as the New Zealand war of 1864 and the Brunei emergency in the 1960s.

They feature weapons, equipment, clothing, flags, musical instruments and regimental silver as well as extensive personal memories, diaries, letters and photographs.

Military experts regularly give talks on a variety of historical themes and mark key anniversaries.

Last year this included the bicentary of Waterloo and 70 years since the end of the Second World War.

For further information visit sofo.org.uk