BRITAIN'S SECRET ARMY
1940 marked some of the darkest days in British history. By the height of the summer, most of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) had been successfully evacuated from Dunkirk, but arrived back home without the majority of its equipment and weapons. Meanwhile, the German army stood just across the Channel, poised to invade. Although the general perception is that the country was on its knees, it was during these desperate days that a highly secret guerrilla force was instigated; one designed to ‘stay behind’ and cause as much chaos as possible, delaying any invading army.
Secret beginnings in Kent
By June, Peter Fleming, the brother of Ian Fleming (the creator of James Bond), was busy organising a group of civilian volunteers in Kent, named the XII Corps Observation Unit. This became the prototype for the Auxiliary Units. Fleming was the perfect fit for organising such a force. A dashing former Guards officer, he was a pre-war explorer and had authored books on his travels in China and the jungles of Brazil. He worked for Military Intelligence (Research) and was immediately set the task of gathering local civilian volunteers and training them in explosives and sabotage.
Fleming had quickly identified and organised a number of men into effective outfits, ready to cause as much disruption to the invading German army as possible. He collected stores of equipment and explosives, built rudimentary underground dug-outs for the
