Home Guard Auxiliaries

The origins of the Second World War Home Guard can be traced to Captain Tom Wintringham, who returned from the Spanish Civil War and wrote a book entitled How to Reform the Army. In the book, as well as many regular army reforms, Wintringham called for the creation of 12 divisions similar in composition to that of the International Brigades, which had been formed in Spain during the conflict. The divisions would be raised by voluntary enlistment targeting ex-servicemen and youths. Despite great interest by the War Office in the book's assertion that 'security is possible', Wintringham's call to train 100,000 men immediately was not implemented. While government officials were debating the need for a home defence force, such a force was actually being formed without any official encouragement. In Essex, men not eligible for call-up into the armed forces were coming forward to join the self-styled "Legion of Frontiersmen". Officials were soon informed of the development of the legion, with the Adjutant-General, Sir Robert Gordon-Finlayson, arguing that the government should encourage the development of more unofficial organisations. The fear of invasion in 1939 quickly dissipated as it became evident that the German military was not in a position to launch an invasion of Britain; official enthusiasm for home defence forces waned and the legion appears to have dissolved itself at the same time.

 

The Battle of France began on 10th May 1940, with the Wehrmacht invading Belgium, the Netherlands and France. By 20th May, German forces had reached the English Channel, and on 28th May, the Belgian Army surrendered. The combination of the large-scale combined operations mounted by the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Norway in April and the prospect that much of the English Channel coast would soon be occupied made the prospect of a German invasion of the British Isles alarmingly real. Fears of an invasion grew rapidly, spurred on by reports both in the press and from official government bodies, of a fifth column operating in Britain that would aid an invasion by German airborne forces.

 

The government soon found itself under increasing pressure to extend the internment of suspect aliens to prevent the formation of a fifth column and to allow the population to take up arms to defend themselves against an invasion. Calls for some form of home defence force soon began to be heard from the press and from private individuals. The press baron Lord Kemsley privately proposed to the War Office that rifle clubs form the nucleus of a home defence force, and Josiah Wedgwood, a Labour MP, wrote to the prime minister asking that the entire adult population be trained in the use of arms and given weapons to defend themselves. Similar calls appeared in newspaper columns: in the 12th May issue of the Sunday Express, a brigadier called on the government to issue free arms licences and permits to buy ammunition to men possessing small arms, and the same day, the Sunday Pictorial asked if the government had considered training golfers in rifle shooting to eliminate stray parachutists. The calls alarmed government and senior military officials, who worried about the prospect of the population forming private defence forces that the army would not be able to control, and in mid-May, the Home Office issued a press release on the matter. It was the task of the army to deal with enemy parachutists, as any civilians who carried weapons and fired on German troops were likely to be executed if captured. Moreover, any lone parachutist descending from the skies in the summer of 1940 was far more likely to be a downed RAF airman than a German Fallschirmjäger.

 

Nevertheless, private defence forces soon began to be formed throughout the country, often sponsored by employers seeking to bolster defence of their factories. This placed the government in an awkward position. The private forces, which the army might not be able to control, could well inhibit the army's efforts during an invasion, but to ignore the calls for a home defence force to be set up would be politically problematic. An officially-sponsored home defence force would allow the government greater control and also allow for greater security around vulnerable areas such as munitions factories and airfields; but there was some confusion over who would form and control the force, with separate plans drawn up by the War Office and General Headquarters Home Forces under General Kirke.

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The government and senior military officials rapidly compared plans and, by 13th May 1940, worked out an improvised plan for a home defence force, to be called the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV). The rush to complete a plan and announce it to the public had led to a number of administrative and logistical problems, such as how the volunteers in the new force would be armed, which caused problems as the force evolved. On the evening of 14th May 1940, the then Secretary of State for War (War Minister) Anthony Eden (who would later serve as Foreign Secretary until the end of the war, ultimately becoming the Prime Minister serving during the time of the Suez Crisis) called for men “not presently engaged in military service between the ages of 17 and 65 to come forward and offer their services to make doubly sure…” “…You will not be paid, but you will receive a uniform and will be armed.” The prospective members of what was originally referred to as the Local Defence Volunteers were to report to their local police station to enlist. The initial concern was that only 500,000 would come forward and volunteer. These fears were soon quickly dispelled, as more than 250,000 came forward within the first week of it’s creation. By July, the Local Defence Volunteers stood at a strength of 1.5 million. Social groups such as cricket and tennis clubs began forming their own units, but the bulk were workplace-based, especially as co-operation from employers was necessary to ensure that volunteers would be available for training and operational patrols. Indeed, many employers envisaged the LDV units primarily as protecting industrial plants from fifth column attack.

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Women were at first prohibited from being in the Home Guard, resulting in some women forming their own groups like the Amazon Defence Corps. In December 1941, a more organised but still unofficial Women's Home Defence (WHD) was formed under the direction of Dr Edith Summerskill, Labour MP for Fulham West. WHD members were given weapons training and basic military training. Limited female involvement was permitted later, on the understanding that these would be in traditional female support roles (e.g. clerical, driving) and not in any way seen as combatants.

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The War Office continued to lay down the administrative and logistical foundations for the LDV organisation. Eden's public words were generally interpreted as an explicit promise to provide everyone who volunteered with a personal firearm. In retrospect, it was recognised that recruitment would have been better limited to the numbers required (and capable of being armed), with later volunteers given places on a waiting list. However, once volunteers had been enlisted, it was considered impossible from a public relations perspective to then dismiss them. Nevertheless, the regular forces saw no priority in providing more arms and equipment to the new force than would have been needed had numbers been properly constrained in the first place. In telegrams to the Lord Lieutenants of each county, it was explained that LDV units would operate in predefined military areas already used by the regular army, with a General Staff Officer coordinating with civilian regional commissioners to divide these areas into smaller zones. In London this was organised on the basis of police districts. On 17th May, the LDV achieved official legal status when the Privy Council issued the Defence (Local Defence Volunteers) Order in Council, and orders were issued from the War Office to regular army headquarters throughout Britain explaining the status of LDV units; volunteers would be divided into sections, platoons and companies but would not be paid and leaders of units would not hold commissions or have the power to command regular forces. Implementation of the legislation proved to be extremely difficult, particularly as the primary focus of the War Office and General Headquarters Home Forces was on Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk between 27 May and 4 June 1940. The apparent lack of focus led to many LDV members becoming impatient, particularly when it was announced that volunteers would receive only armbands printed with "L.D.V." on them until proper uniforms could be manufactured, and there was no mention of weapons being issued to units. The impatience led to many units conducting their own patrols without official permission, often led by men who had previously served in the armed forces.

 

The presence of many veterans and the appointment of ex-officers as commanders of LDV units, only worsened the situation, with many believing that they did not require training before being issued weapons. That led to numerous complaints being received by the War Office and the press and to many ex-senior officers attempting to use their influence to obtain weapons or permission to begin patrolling. The issue of weapons to LDV units was particularly problematic for the War Office, as it was recognised that the rearming and re-equipping of the regular forces would have to take precedence over the LDV. All civilian firearms, especially shotguns and pistols, previously were to have been handed in to local police stations, and volunteers were allowed often by the police to retrieve these for their LDV duties. In rural areas, volunteer shotgun users initially organised themselves into vigilante groups, dubbed 'the parashots' by the press, to watch the early morning skies for German parachutists.

 

For public (and enemy) consumption, the government maintained that large stocks of Lee-Enfield rifles remained from the First World War, but the actual total reserve stockpile amounted to 300,000, and they had already been earmarked for the expansion of the army by 122 infantry battalions. Instead, the War Office issued instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails and emergency orders were placed for Ross rifles from Canada. In the absence of proper weapons, local units improvised weapons, especially grenades, mortars and grenade projectors, from whatever came to hand, and the legacy of self-reliant improvisation in the face of what was interpreted as official disregard and obstruction was to remain as a characteristic of the Home Guard throughout its existence. Another problem that was encountered as the LDV was organised was the definition of the role the organisation was to play. Initially, in the eyes of the War Office and the army, the LDV was to act as 'an armed police constabulary', which, in the event of an invasion, was to man roadblocks, observe German troop movements, convey information to the regular forces and guard places of strategic or tactical importance. The War Office believed that the LDV would act best in such a passive role because of its lack of training, weapons and proper equipment. Such a role clashed with the expectations of LDV commanders and members who believed that the organisation would be best suited to an active role of hunting down and killing parachutists, and fifth columnists, as well as attacking and harassing German forces.

 

"In the popular mind it was the twin terrors of Nazi paratrooper and Fifth Columnist traitor which were the Home Guard’s nemesis, its natural enemy. Notwithstanding that the Home Guard actually spent most of its time preparing to defend 'nodal points' against tank attack, operating anti-aircraft artillery or locating unexploded bombs."

 

The clash led to morale problems and even more complaints to the press and the War Office from LDV members who were opposed, as they saw it, the government's leaving them defenceless and placing them in a non-combatant role. Complaints about the role of the LDV and continuing problems encountered by the War Office in its attempts to clothe and arm the LDV, led the government to respond to public pressure in August, redefining the role of the LDV to include delaying and obstructing German forces through any means possible. Also in August, the Home Office and MI5 instituted the 'Invasion List', a list of around 1,000 persons whose 'recent conduct or words indicated that they were likely to assist the enemy' and who would be apprehended by the police in the event of an invasion, hoping thereby to forestall the expectations of many LDV volunteers that they would then be empowered to act as 'Judge, Jury and Executioner' of potential collaborators and fifth columnists.

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At the same time, Churchill, who had assumed the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, became involved in the matter after being alerted to the problems, obtaining a summary of the current LDV position from the War Office on 22 June 1940. After reviewing the summary, Churchill wrote to Eden stating that in his opinion, one of the main causes of disciplinary and morale problems stemmed from the uninspiring title of the LDV and suggesting that it be renamed as the 'Home Guard'. Despite resistance from Eden and other government officials, who noted that one million "LDV" armbands had already been printed and the cost of printing another million 'Home Guard' armbands would be excessive, Churchill would not be dissuaded. On 22nd July, the LDV was officially renamed the Home Guard. Churchill ruled decisively on the issue of whether civilian volunteers should actively resist German forces, even at the expense of setting themselves outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions. The 'Rules of War', he pointed out, had been drawn up with the express intention of avoiding defeated combatants fighting on to the last. However, in the fight against Nazism, any outcome, including the complete destruction of a town and the massacre of its population, would be preferable to its acquiescing to Nazi rule. Urged on by the War Office, Prime Minister Winston Churchill initiated the Auxiliary Units in the early summer of 1940. This was to counter the civilian Home Defence Scheme already established by SIS (MI6), but outside War Office control. The Auxiliary Units answered to GHQ Home Forces but were legally an integral part of the Home Guard.

 

Section D, a sabotage and resistance unit which was part of MI 6, began recruiting personnel and accumulating arms and equipment in mid-June, 1940. This roused suspicion among the military authorities, and General Ironside, the C-in-C of GHQ Home Forces, insisted that all guerrilla and sabotage organisations be subject to military control. Colonel Colin Gubbins was the obvious choice to command the new organisation. Gubbins was a regular British Army soldier who had acquired considerable experience and expertise in guerrilla warfare during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1919 and in the Irish War of Independence of 1919–1921. From early 1939, he had served with MI R, another guerrilla organisation controlled by the War Office. Most recently, he had returned from the Norwegian campaign, where he headed the Independent Companies, the predecessors of the British Commandos, before succeeding to the acting command of a Guards brigade. He later wrote:

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“I had, in fact, been given a blank cheque, but was there any money in the bank to meet it? Everything would have to be improvised. Time was of the essence ... at the shortest we had six weeks before a full-scale invasion could be launched; if we were lucky, we might have until October, after which climatic conditions would give us a respite …”

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Gubbins used several officers who had served with the Independent Companies in Norway and others whom he had known there. Units were localised on a county structure, as they would probably be fragmented and isolated from one another. They were distributed around the coast rather than being countrywide, with priority being given to the counties most at risk from enemy invasion, the two most vulnerable being Kent and Sussex in South East England. The two best known officers from the period are Captain Peter Fleming of the Grenadier Guards and Captain Mike Calvert of the Royal Engineers (who would go on to be a commander with the Chindits and the SAS). In November 1940, Colonel Gubbins moved to the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which had incorporated Section D and MI R, as its Director of Operations.

 

The Home Guard in 1940 were an armed uniformed civilian militia, entirely distinct from the regular armed forces. Volunteers originally had no recognised military rank, were not subject to military discipline and could withdraw (or be withdrawn by their employers) at any time. In 1941, nominal ranks were introduced for Home Guard 'officers', and in 1942, limited conscription was implemented intended for circumstances where Home Guard forces were taking over functions from regular forces (chiefly coastal artillery and anti-aircraft batteries), and non-officer volunteers became 'privates'. Volunteers remained legally civilians and failure to attend when ordered to do so was punishable by civilian authorities. Nevertheless, the British Government consistently maintained that as Home Guard service was strictly to be undertaken only in approved uniform. Uniformed volunteers would be lawful combatants within the Geneva Conventions and so would be "prisoners of war" if captured. That was an argument with a long history since armed civilian irregulars (uniformed and non-uniformed) had been widely employed by smaller combatant nations in the First World War, but former British governments had consistently refused to recognise captured irregular combatants in uniform as prisoners of war. Indeed, most of the Irish Republican volunteers executed by the British administration following the 1916 Easter Rising had been fighting or at least surrendered in full Irish Volunteer or Irish Citizen Army uniforms. However, that was an uprising or rebellion of subjects of the Crown and was not entirely comparable to combatants in a war between sovereign states.

 

German and Austrian military traditions were, if anything, more absolute in rejecting any recognition of civilian militia combatants as prisoners of war since the German response to the non-uniformed francs-tireurs who had attacked German forces during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It had long been standard German military practice that civilians who attacked German troops in areas that opposing regular forces had surrendered, withdrawn or chosen not to defend should be considered properly liable to be shot out of hand. Indeed, German military doctrine had always maintained that their military forces were further entitled in such circumstances to take reprisals against unarmed local civilians - taking and executing hostages, and levelling villages: "fight chivalrously against an honest foe; armed irregulars deserve no quarter". The actions of regular German forces during the Second World War consistently conformed to those principles: captured partisans in the Soviet Union and the Balkans, whether they were fighting in uniform or not, were killed on the spot. German radio broadcasts described the British Home Guard as 'gangs of murderers' and left no doubt that they would not be regarded as lawful combatants.

 

By the end of 1940, the Home Guard was established into 1,200 battalions, 5,000 companies and 25,000 platoons. For its primary defensive role, each section was trained and equipped to operate as a single, largely independent 'battle platoon', with an operational establishment of between 25 and 30 men at any one time although, as volunteers would also have full-time jobs, the numbers of volunteers in each section would be around twice that establishment. In the event of an invasion, the Home Guard battle platoons in a town would be under the overall control of an Army military commander and maintain contact with that commander with a designated 'runner' (no Home Guard units were issued with wireless sets until 1942), who would usually be a motorbike owner. Otherwise, the battle platoon was static and would defend a defined local area and report on enemy activity in that area, but it was neither equipped nor expected to join up with the mobile forces of the regular army. Each Home Guard unit would establish and prepare a local strongpoint, from which 'civilians' (non-Home Guard) would be cleared if possible, and aim to defend that strongpoint for as long as possible. It might be forced to retreat towards a neighbouring strongpoint but would not surrender so long as ammunition held out. Most towns of any size would have a number such Home Guard units, each defending its own strongpoint and providing 'defence in depth', which should ideally be sited to offer supporting fire to cover one another and to control road access through the town from all directions.

 

Each battle platoon had a headquarters section; commander, second in command, runner, and at least one marksman 'sniper' with an Enfield P’14 or M1917 Enfield rifle. The fighting force of the platoon consisted of three squads of around 8 men, each squad having a three-man automatic weapons group (usually with one either of a BAR or Lewis gun) and a rifle/bomb group armed with Enfield P’14 or M1917 rifles, grenades and sticky-bombs, and a Thompson (or from 1941 a Sten) sub-machine gun if possible. Men without rifles should all have shotguns, if available. The basic tactical principle was 'aggressive defence'; fire would be held until the enemy were within the defensive perimeter of the town in force and they would then be attacked with concentrated firepower of bombs, grenades, shotguns and automatic weapons (as much as possible from above and from the rear), with the object of forcing them into cover close by. Retreating enemy forces would be counter-attacked (again preferably from the rear), the automatic weapons group of each squad providing covering fire while the bombing group attacked with grenades, sub-machine guns and shotguns. As many Germans as possible should be killed, and no prisoners would be taken. Battle tactics were derived substantially from the experience of Spanish Republican forces although they also drew on the experience of the British Army (and the IRA) in Ireland. The emphasis was on drawing the Germans into fighting in central urban areas at short ranges, where stone buildings would provide cover; lines of communication between units would be short; the Home Guard's powerful arsenal of shotguns, bombs and grenades would be most effective; and German tanks and vehicles would be constrained by narrow, winding streets.

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It is a common fallacy that the Home Guard never fired a shot in anger during the whole of the Second World War. In fact, individual Home Guardsmen helped man anti-aircraft guns as early as the Battle of Britain during the summer of 1940. By 1943, the Home Guard operated its own dedicated batteries of anti-aircraft guns, rockets, coastal defence artillery and engaging German planes with their machine guns. They are credited with shooting down numerous Luftwaffe aircraft and the V-1 flying bombs that followed them in the summer of 1944. The Home Guard's first official kill was shot down on Tyneside in 1943. The Home Guard in Northern Ireland also took part in gun battles with the IRA. A major new function emerged for the Home Guard after the German bombing campaign, the Blitz, in 1940 and 1941; resulting in large numbers of unexploded bombs in urban areas. Home Guard units took on the task of locating unexploded bombs after raids and, if such bombs were found (often after several months or years), would commonly assist in sealing off the danger area and evacuating civilians. Most Home Guard wartime fatalities occurred in the course of that task. Aside from deaths in accidents, the Home Guard lost a total of 1,206 members on duty to unexploded bombs, air and rocket attacks during the war.

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Among its many roles and responsibilities, the Home Guard had a number of secret roles which it’s members could participate in. That included sabotage units who would disable factories and petrol installations following the invasion. Members with outdoor survival skills and experience (especially as gamekeepers or poachers) could be recruited into the Auxiliary Units, an extremely secretive force of more highly trained guerilla units with the task of hiding behind enemy lines after an invasion, emerging to attack and destroy supply dumps, disabling tanks and trucks, assassinating collaborators, and killing sentries and senior German officers with sniper rifles. They would operate from pre-prepared secret underground bases, excavated at night with no official records, in woods, in caves, or otherwise concealed. These concealed bases, upwards of 600 in number, were able to support units ranging in size from squads to companies. In the event of an invasion, all Auxiliary Units would disappear into their Operational Bases (otherwise known as OBs) and would not maintain contact with local Home Guard commanders, who should indeed be wholly unaware of their existence. Hence, although the Auxiliaries were Home Guard volunteers and wore Home Guard uniforms, they would not participate in the conventional phase of their town's defence but would be activated once the local Home Guard defence had ended to inflict maximum mayhem and disruption over a further necessarily brief but violent period.

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General Home Guard units were instructed to fight on and not to surrender, but it was expected that nevertheless, once their ammunition was exhausted, they would have to give themselves up to capture. That was seen as creating an opportunity for a hidden Auxiliary Unit in the locality to kill as many Germans as possible just when they might be considering themselves as victors.

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The Auxiliary Units were always intended to fight in Home Guard uniform and from 1942 the men were badged to Home Guard battalions 201 (Scotland & Northumberland), 202 (Wales and England North of the Thames-Severn Line), or 203 (South of the Thames-Severn Line [including Devon and Cornwall]). Around 3,500 men were trained on weekend courses at Coleshill House, near Highworth, Wiltshire, in the arts of guerrilla warfare including assassination, unarmed combat, demolition and sabotage. Each Patrol was a self-contained cell, expected to be self-sufficient and operationally autonomous in the case of invasion, generally operating within a 15-mile radius. They were provided with elaborately-concealed underground Operational Bases (OB), usually built by the Royal Engineers in a local woodland, with a camouflaged entrance and emergency escape tunnel. Some Patrols had an additional concealed Observation Post and/or underground ammunition store. Patrols were provided with a selection of the latest weapons, including a silenced pistol or Sten gun and Fairbairn–Sykes "commando" knives, quantities of plastic explosive, incendiary devices, and food to last for two weeks. Their rations were only expected to last 10-14 days, because it was assumed that after that period had elapsed, they would have either been killed or relieved by local counter-attack.

 

On the whole, the Auxiliary Units were better equipped than the average Home Guard Platoon, with one notable exception - the lack of any “large” automatic weapon, like the BAR or the Lewis gun. The Auxiliary Units were always given a very large amount of explosives with which they were to carry out their work. Compared to the average Home Guard Platoon, the average Auxiliary Unit Patrol would also have a much better ammunition allocation per weapon. Some patrols, notable the Chelmsford Patrol, often worked with members of the Regular Army during their training, which resulted in an occurrence where they received a very high quantity of ammunition for their sniper rifles. The key advantage that the Auxiliary Units and Home Guard had over their opponents was local knowledge - they would know where they could hide and where they could launch ambushes from and get away undetected. Auxiliary Units were generally 6-12 men strong, each having extensive knowledge of their local area and who was likely to become a collaborator.

 

Each Auxiliary Patrol was given two items that were only to be opened once the Germans had passed through their area of operation. One was a jar of rum and the other was an envelope, which contained a piece of paper. On that piece of paper was a list of people for the Auxiliary Units to “deal with”. Each list was different for each patrol, but each patrol had someone who had an identical role to be killed - the local chief constable. The reason for this was that he was the one who had vetted the Auxiliary Patrol members and therefore knew their names and addresses - details that meant that he would have known too much to have been allowed to live. One patrol had an elderly couple on their list - their only crime was that their house overlooked the location of that patrol’s Operational Base.

 

The term Hideout was only used on an official basis for a very short period, as it was realised that should the enemy hear the word “hideout” would lead to an overwhelming force of the enemy raising the area to the ground - which led to the term Operational Base being used, which was a more appropriate term.

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In modern times, the Auxiliary Units have sometimes misleadingly been referred to as the "British Resistance Organisation". That is a title was never used by the organization officially but reflects a subsequent misunderstanding of what their role might have been. Colloquially, members of the Auxiliary Units were referred to as "scallywags" and their activities as "scallywagging". The Auxiliary Units were kept in being long after any immediate German threat had passed and were stood down only in November 1944. Several Auxiliary Unit members later joined the Special Air Service. Many men saw action in the campaign in France in late 1944, notably in Operation Houndsworth and Operation Bulbasket.

 

From 1942, the Operational Patrols of the Auxiliary Units tried to reinvent themselves as an anti-raiding force. That was primarily a device to avoid them from being disbanded as the War Office had made a promise that the volunteers would not be returned to normal Home Guard duties. They therefore had to be kept in existence until the general stand-down of the Home Guard. Nonetheless, some units were deployed to the Isle of Wight prior to the D day landings in 1944 to help protect the Pluto fuel pipeline from being attacked by German commandos. It was then suggested that the Auxiliary Units should be fully administered by the Home Guard, but that was not enacted before the final stand-down in November 1944.

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Due to the secretive nature of the Auxiliary Units, the total number of Auxiliary Unit Patrols that existed is not known - however, the best estimates place the figure somewhere in the region of 650-1000 Patrols. After the war, the a large number of OBs were destroyed by the Royal Engineers in order to remove any trace of the existence of the Auxiliary Units: some by explosives in the main chamber and others with concrete poured down both the access shaft and escape tunnel. Some however, have survived in very good condition, namely the Operational Bases ad Stansted St Andrew, and most fittingly, at Coleshill, the Headquarters of the Auxiliary Units.