SUSSEX AUXILARY UNITS
by
GEORGE THOMAS (Former A.U.Patrol Leader)
with
PETER LONGSTAFF-TYRRELL
Adapted from `LOOPHOLES No 18`
The elite Auxiliary Units established during WW2 were a section of the Services made up of personnel from all the Armed Forces: the modest 'Auxiliary Units' title was applied to distract attention from their discreet activities. Selection for the Home Guard section of recruits began in 1940 to form the nucleus of a subversive underground force to operate behind enemy lines if we were invaded.
Service personnel built perfectly camouflaged bases for patrols of up to eight Home Guard members to operate from, and they were expected to know an area of about ten square miles around their hideout. Logically, many patrol members ultimately came from farmers, agricultural workers and market gardeners, who had invaluable local knowledge.
We knew members of our neighbouring patrols but not their Operational Bases (OBs). These rural retreats were generally Nissen huts with their roof-tops several feet underground, with a brick-walled shaft with metal rungs down to the blast wall entry point. Other more remote bases were constructed with more mobile timber framework and corrugated iron sheets.
At the bottom of the 9ft deep bricked
entry shaft to our OB, half-a-mile into West Wood beside One Hundred Acre
Lane at Wivelsfield (TQ 345 193 south of Haywards Heath in West Sussex) were
two 30-gallon water tanks. Storage space for two weeks' stock of tinned rations,
cooking and lighting provision, explosives, fuses and detonators, booby-trap
devices, incendiary and time-delay pencils, together with ammunition for rifles,
revolvers, Sten and Tommy guns filled the OB. The base comprised a floor area
19ft long by 9ft wide with offset entrances. There were barrack-type beds-cum-seats
for eight men on either side of a central table. Glazed ventilation pipes
ran out to root clusters of hazel which concealed them. A vital aspect of
our OB was a length of 33in diameter concrete drainage pipe which acted as
a waste outlet for the base, and also as a 25ft long escape route to a lower
level of the wood: this camouflaged exit could only be opened from inside.
During construction of out hideout a double layer
of chestnut fencing was used for each wheel track. After completion we had
to remove it to keep the site secret - consequently our farms received a great
deal of free fencing.
Our main target would have been the temporary grassland airfield No. 131 which had been laid out across Bower Farm and Great Homewood Farm, North Chailey. It was used as an Advanced Landing Ground during the move into enemy-held Europe towards 1944, as a fighter base for Polish-piloted Spitfire IXs. Their squadrons (Nos 302, 308 and 317) arrived in late April from nearby Deanland. The site was also used as an Emergency Landing Ground for aircraft damaged in operational flights.
Several B17 Flying Fortresses landed at Chailey ALG and once a Lockheed Lightning made a forced landing on the east-west runway and jumped the road at the end of the runway to finish up where the 'Plough' inn had been sited prior to the building of the airstrip. The rebuilt Harvey's 'Plough' at Plumpton (TQ 365 182) opened on March 16, 1956 after a temporary Nissen but hostelry sufficed for the loss of the original inn.
Nationally there was a double ring of OBs constructed right round the country, units being about 10 miles apart and 10 - 15 miles inland. The Home Guard personnel to man these sites made three Battalions numbered 201, 202 and 203. We all had to sign the Official Secrets Act forms, and the fact that Auxiliary Unit operations did not become generally public knowledge until 1990 shows how effective the Act was. Ironically, perhaps, in view of the highly dangerous role of Auxiliary Unit members, no official recognition of awards were ever made and they were informed by letter that units were standing down. Often personnel wore dark blue working tunics instead of their Home Guard uniforms and their status as saboteurs and not Servicemen, in contravention of the Geneva Convention, could have led to them being executed if captured by enemy troops.
The headquarters of the whole underground operation was Coleshill House, near Highworth, Swindon, secluded on the Berkshire Downs. All personnel, about 60 at a time and 1 or 2 each from different patrols, attended for intensive training in the best way to destroy all types of enemy vehicles and aircraft, as well as killing invaders.
The Army Operational HQ for all the Sussex Auxiliary Units was at Tottington Manor (TQ 216 116) near Small Dole, Henfield in W Sussex, beside the road to Edburton under Truleigh Hill. The officers and personnel came from a wide range of regiments and it was beneath Tottington Manor that they constructed a secret cellar with a hidden entrance from the existing cellars. The cellar led to an escape tunnel leading to an inspection cover for the toilets, which raises-up for entry or exit on the release of a catch.
We did much of our training at Tottington Manor but officers also came to our own areas and organised inter-patrol competitions. They transported us on two-hour journeys, either east or west, to test the security of radar bases, aerodromes, camps etc. We never failed to enter any of them and place dummy charges, but how hard it was to keep awake the next day whilst making hay!
All the houses and farms on the Downs had been evacuated and the area was used as training grounds for the forces, mainly Canadian troops after 1940, and we practised booby-trapping the house at Standean Farm north of Brighton. There was a Nissen but built halfway up Ditchling Beacon to service drums of incendiaries slotted into the bank sides. Guns on Ditchling Common kept shells whistling overhead to targets in the Downs, with occasional shells falling short on the northern slopes of the Downs.
Frank Mayston, who was born in Ditchling, was in the Royal Engineers stationed at Small Dole in charge of the construction of all the county's OBs and in keeping them supplied. Frank recruited all of the Ditchling patrol members and carried out the initial training in our own homes.
At our first reunion in November 1994,
50 years after standing down, members of different patrols recalled officers
who had served in their area training. Our main officer was Captain Bradford
of the Devonshire Light Infantry who, just prior to D-Day, asked most of us
to volunteer to be dropped with him in France behind the German defences.
We were to have
two weeks' parachute training first. Fortunately we were not called upon for
sadly Captain Bradford and his batman were killed when they ran into a German
patrol after three weeks of operation in France. His brother, who was in one
of the Sussex Home Guard companies, showed us a photo of his grave which was
well looked after by local people.
A Black Watch officer sometimes helped in our training. We also met officers of other regiments during inter-patrol competitions elsewhere in Sussex, although we were often not sure where we were without a map reference as all signposts were removed in the first months of the war.
If we had been invaded, all patrols would have taken on their code name for all intelligence messages, for added security. Our Ditchling code was 'Hind'; Offham Patrol was named 'Weasel' and the Patrol Leader was Frank Martin of Allingham Farm; Ringmer Patrol was named 'Fox' and their Patrol Leader lived at Clayhill Farm; Mr Willett led the Bishopstone Patrol called 'Badger One', that later absorbed the Firle Patrol called 'Badger Two' (Firle was the smallest p with just four members); Frank Dean, the village blacksmith, led Rodmell Patrol; Percy Tulley led Hurstpierpoint and Frank Masefield Baker led the Bolney Patrol.
At the reunion in November 1994 around 40 people attended and a radio link-up was made with the Monmouth organisation that had arranged reunions for their members every year since standing down. Seeing all exmembers, most in their 80s or 90s, it seems hard to think of us crawling in the dark through the triple Dannert wire and double apron wire that defended most of our potential targets, but practice had proved it to be quite easy.
Tottington Manor is now a popular
restaurant and hotel and the once-secret cellar has been incorporated into
the existing cellar for storage of beers and spirits. Farm buildings have
been erected alongside and a farm road runs over where the escape exit inspection
cover used to be.
The national reunion in Berkshire had to be held in an hotel as the elaborate
Inigo Jones-designed Coleshill House that was the wartime Auxiliary Units'
training centre was accidentally burned down shortly after the war. Those
who attended the function visited Coleshill Estate to revive old memories,
where more recently the administering National trust authorities have planted
trees in commemoration of the Auxiliary Patrol members.