Today we are marking Victory in Europe Day – the day, 8 May 1945, when Germany surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II in Europe. However, the summer of 1940 saw some of the darkest days of Britain’s war. An Allied Forces victory was by no means assured. France had fallen to the Germans and hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen had been successfully evacuated.
The German army had sped through Western Europe. In 6 weeks, they had defeated the French Army which, at the beginning of the war, was the largest and most mobile force in the world. The Germans seemed unstoppable. With the Channel the only thing separating Britain from what looked like inevitable destruction, the counties in East Anglia were at serious risk of invasion.
Our perception of Britain in 1940 has largely been influenced by Dad’s Army — a Home Guard of old men, with no equipment, bumbling around comically. Such men would have stood no chance against the invading Nazis. However, the reality is very different.
The beginning of the Auxiliary Units
Britain had started planning for an invasion long before the Second World War started. Both MI6 and an arm of the military, called Military Intelligence (Research), had been looking at new ways of fighting an enemy and utilising civilians in resisting an invasion. In the summer of 1940, thoughts were quickly focused on effective ways of defending the island, with both the Secret Service and the Army coming together to form what would become the Auxiliary Units.
With the threat of invasion apparently imminent, the defence work of the XII Corps Observation Unit founded by and run by Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond), was extended to the vulnerable counties of Britain. The corps were the prototype unit for the new Auxiliary Units.
East Anglian saboteurs and guerrilla fighters
Colonel Colin Gubbins, who later became head of the Special Operations Executive, was given command of this new group. He appointed an Intelligence Officer (IO) for each county and they recruited fighters in their area.
The IO for East Anglia was Captain Andrew Croft, a noted pre-war Polar explorer. Croft quickly identified ‘key men’ in towns and villages near to likely targets, such as key bridges, railways, airfields and country houses that might be taken as HQs by the Germans; and also near to likely British collaborators. He was looking for farmers, gamekeepers, farm workers, blacksmiths and such – anyone who had an intimate understanding of the countryside around them, could live off the land, and were young and fit enough to be effective in fighting an enemy behind the lines.
Croft ask suitable recruits if they would be interested in helping their country and doing something ‘more interesting than the Local Defence Volunteers’ (which most had joined already). They were asked to sign the Official Secrets Act and then told what would be expected of them and any men under their command. The secrecy surrounding the units meant that the key man, who would go on to be the Patrol leader, would only recruit those he trusted – typically, relatives, colleagues, friends of friends. They also needed to have the same intimate knowledge of the local landscape which would allow them to move across fields and through woods at night.
The role of the Auxiliary Units
The Patrol would only become active once the invading Germans had reached their town or village. Then they would disappear to a secret underground bunker, called an Operational Base (OB), and colloquially known as a ‘scallywag bunker’.
There were around 112 Patrols across Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk, each with their own disguised OB. In Hintlesham, Suffolk, the local Patrol’s OB has collapsed but with some visible remains. The Weeley Patrol in Essex had an OB built by the Royal Engineers, which remains almost fully intact. Others such as the Baconsthorpe Patrol in Norfolk, used existing structures, in this case, the base of the North-East tower at the local ruined castle.
Whilst most of the OBs are on private land, visiting Parham Airfield Museum in Suffolk will allow you not only to see some fantastic displays, but also to walk into a replica OB to give you an impression of what it might have been like.
The structure of an OB
The entrance to the bunker tended to be a ground hatch, heavily disguised, and with entry via several ingenious ways. For some, you stamped on the hatch which popped up automatically and swivelled round. Others had marbles which, when someone was at the entrance, would drop down a disguised mouse hole into a tin. The rattling marble alerted the rest of the Patrol of a fellow member on the surface. Once open, a chimney-like shaft ran 15 feet or so underground. At the bottom was a blast wall, and then the main chamber where the men would rest during the day. There was often storage and an escape tunnel running out of the back of the OB.
Early OBs were built by the Patrols themselves, and many were not very successful. However, when the Royal Engineers built the structures, they had the know-how of air flow. Huge air ventilation pipes, made of glazed earthen ware, brought in clean air and took ‘bad’ air out. The pipes exited the surface, often as disguised animal holes, or at the bases of tree trunks.
The invasion resistance plan
The men would wait for the Germans to pass over them and then come out at night. Their role was not to fight the Germans face-to-face. Their brief was to hit the supply chain, causing enough chaos to slow down the German advance, blowing fuel and ammunition dumps, destroying railway lines, bridges, and convoys. Local country houses that had been taken as German HQs were to be destroyed and German officers and British collaborators assassinated.
Civilians who had stumbled across an OB, or knew too much about the Auxiliary Units’ activity, would be added to a list of people to be assassinated. The men of the Auxiliary Units had enough rations in their bunker for only two weeks. This represented their life expectancy once operational, and anything or anyone that shortened their expected period of operation had to be eliminated.
East Anglia, the crucial battlefield
Had the Germans invaded, East Anglia was expected to be the front-line battlefield. The men of the Auxiliary Units were not blood-thirsty killers, but rather understood the wider picture. If Britain fell, that would have essentially represented the end of the war.
In 1940, the USA was neutral; they did not enter the war until December 1941. It was widely believed unlikely that the British Empire would come to the rescue of the ‘Old World’.
The short, sharp snap to be perpetrated by the Auxiliary Units at the heels of the invading Germans, was designed to slow their advance and give the British regular forces time to recover and counter-attack. It would have been a suicidal effort. And because of the secrecy surrounding the Units, 80–90% of the men went to their grave without telling anyone of what their role could have been. Not even their wives or children knew of Churchill’s secret army in Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk.
The Coleshill Auxiliary Research Team (CART) is a group of volunteer researchers who research the Auxiliary Units, Special Duties Branch and other secret civilian units in the Second World War. More can be found at www.staybehinds.com
While the term ‘Scallywag’ is now increasingly used as a way to describe the Auxiliary Units, CART has found no evidence that it was ever used at the time. Veterans who CART has interviewed do not recognise the term, nor was it used in the 1968 publication, The Last Ditch by David Lampe. However, it remains a word that captures the public’s attention.
