In Britain during the first year of WW2 little happened to indicate how the conflict would ultimately develop, except that the German forces were heading rapidly towards the Northern coast of France with no hope that anyone would be able to stop them. Then they were obviously making preparation to invade Britain. Preparations to defend against the biggest and best equipped army the world had so far seen were not going to be easy. Pillboxes and defensive lines are elsewhere on this site and were built in a great hurry. However, Britain had one thing up its sleeve that nobody had so far done. This is still little known even here after all these years. Major General Colin Gubbins is known for his work with SOE during the war and for many other things before and after it. One other thing he had a hand in was the guerrilla force formed mainly from the civilian Home Guard units. It is tempting to think of Britons as a quiet and reserved people, but make no mistake we are a very tribal lot and our history shows we are not shy about fighting when it is necessary. The once enormous British Empire should be a hint in this regard! This force was the only one ever formed in any country before an invasion took place. They were most interesting if almost unknown addition to the nations preparations for its last stand.

"I have been following with much interest the growth and development of the new guerrilla formations. . .known as "Auxiliary Units". From what I hear these units are being organised with thoroughness and imagination and should, in the event of invasion, prove a useful addition to the regular forces."
Winston Churchill, to Anthony Eden, 25th September 1940.

Who were these men? All Home Guard personnel were local men who because of their age or because they were in a reserved occupation and could not be called up for the regular armed forces, were equipped and trained for local defence. They were given or in the early days provided for themselves old or obsolete equipment in many cases and had a reputation as being perhaps slightly humorous and were referred to as Dads Army (a title used for a long running comic TV series about them). However, they were a real fighting force and would doubtless have made their presence felt, even if they were not going to cause the great German Army too much bother in the final reckoning.They became a remarkably prefessional body of men with over a million members eventually. From this force were selected men to become the Auxiliary Units and they were sworn to secrecy and equipped and trained separately. Each unit knew its local area intimately and was quite separate from its neighbours. SOE (Special Operations Executive, the sabotage organisation for overseas "guerilla" warfare.) had an important headquarters at Coleshill House in Wiltshire and here a training set up was created for the new Auxilliary Units. The new force was shown how to build hidden bunkers here. Many were constructed for them by regular troops, back in their home bases. These bunkers were located in remote often wooded areas and were designed for the unit to go to ground, at the approach of the invaders. The bunkers contained food an water reserves and were fitted with beds and toilet facilities. They had escape arrangements, often a concrete tube that exited some distance from the bunker. Heat and light by kerosene burners was catered for in some clever ventilation too. They would have used their local knowledge to begin a campaign of harassment and destruction once the enemy had taken over the area. One patrol member might have been out gathering information dueing the day, using his local job and knowledge as cover, and the rest would make use of this intelligence at night. The fact that a number of these bunkers still exist shows how well they were hidden. Sometimes their weapons caches come to light too. Some of these are illuminating. They were often buried in galvanised steel rubbish bins near the undergound bunkers and a few were in more inventive places. There was a Lewis gun found underneath the stage in a village hall a few years ago, for example. One story springs to mind about a quartermaster for one of these units, in Essex I think. He collected all the equipment from his unit at the disbandment of the unit. He then followed his last order and looked after it while waiting for the army to come and collect it. He waited a long time, taking care that the explosives were kept in suitable conditions and when his barn became unsafe, even moving the equipment into his own house. Eventually he decided that as an old man he could wait no longer and went to the police to request some advice in 1964. The police and bomb disposal team were amazed to find a house with a huge arms cache in it some twenty years after the war. He had hundreds of pounds of assorted explosives, fuses, detonating cord, detonators, booby trap switches, timers, delay fuses, grenades, mine casings, and so on. He also had assorted weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, all beautifully looked after and in full working order. Not a word had he said to anyone all those years. Some of the equipment these units used is worrying at any level. The No.74ST grenade or sticky bomb is a good example. A glass sphere, later plastic, with 20 ounces of liquid nitroglycerine in it and covered with an extremely sticky coating. The idea was to approach an enemy tank, with this bomb and throw it like any other grenade, with the aim of sticking it to the vulnerable upper surface of the tank. It was primed by removing a pin and releasing a handle, which initiated a five second fuse. It was one of the more effective weapons available for use against tanks at the time. The regular army were apparently not too keen on these devices, and preferred to rely on their own weapons. They also spotted the fact that the sticky coating worked better on uniforms than tanks. It was an almost guaranteed fact that some soldier would get himself stuck to the bomb he had just primed, with predictably tragic results.

See the Coleshill House website, about the place where the Auxilliary Unit members were trained. Click here.