Britain's brave 'scallywags' trained for a Nazi invasion

It was Winston Churchill's final line of defence, a fighting force so secret its members were even forbidden from telling their wives about it.

- JAMES RAMPTON

IN THE event of a Nazi invasion, a troop of “clandestine domestic military operatives” were to be our last line of defence. These British civilian “scallywags” had volunteered for a confidential plan that would potentially save the nation, but would also lead to their certain deaths.

They were all that stood between us and a future as an enslaved, Germanspeaking nation – our top-secret soldiers.

In 1940, faced by the dire threat of Hitler invading, Churchill set up an astounding network of hush-hush underground military hideouts, known as “scallywag bunkers” (named after the mischievous saboteurs who staffed them).

Andrew Chatterton, author of a new book called Fortress Britain 1940, confesses that when he first heard about the bunkers, “it completely blew my mind. How did we not know about this?”.

More than 600, manned by secretive groups known as Auxiliary Units, were constructed along the east coast. Each would be occupied by a team of up to eight guerillas. Volunteers were drawn from reserved occupations such as farmers, gamekeepers, miners and quarrymen – fit young men familiar with handling guns and explosives. With two weeks of rations the saboteurs would shut themselves into their bunkers until the German invasion force had advanced over their position.