Malcolm Atkin Military Research
Deadly Assassins?
That the Operational Patrols of the Auxiliary Units were well-trained in sabotage, including techniques of quietly eliminating sentries is not is question and is well documented in their surviving training instructions. More contentious is the degree that they were expected to act as assassins against anyone who knew their existence or potential collaborators. This is a concept that relies mainly on oral history collected decades after the event and it is notable that Training Officer Nigel Oxenden makes no mention of any assassination role in his 1944 draft official history of the Auxiliary Units.
Whispers of an assassination role seem likely to have been greatly exaggerated for post-war dramatic effect, illustrating the concerns that Peter Fleming, pioneer of XII Corps Observation Unit, expressed in 1957 over the fallibility of oral history. 'Yet legend plays a large part in their memories of that tense and strangely exhilarating summer, and their experiences, like those of early childhood, are sharply rather than accurately etched upon their minds. The stories they tell of the period have become better, but not more veracious, with the passage of time. Rumours are remembered as facts...' Former Intelligence Officer Stuart Edmundson also offered a warning in 1998: ‘many glamourised stories have come out on the media, told by the warriors themselves. Membership of A.U. was the big event of their young lives.’ The original 2ic Peter Wilkinson was similarly unimpressed by the post-war mystique that had accumulated. He was ‘obviously irritated by the myth of a secret society of ninja-like assassins that was becoming an accepted part of Aux Unit folklore’.
So how do we interpret the veteran accounts of being given sealed letters containing lists of what they assumed were details of suspected local collaborators or security risks to be liquidated upon invasion? Auxilier Don Handscombe from Essex recalled ‘We knew of a list of people who might have collaborated with the enemy. But it was not produced to us. We were told that part of our duties may have been to deal with some of these people, but we didn’t really know more than that.’
The simple truth is that as none of these letters survive, or seem to have been opened at the time, we do not know what they contained and so they remain a matter for speculation. They might equally have contained details of renezvous points or supply dumps (as the Home Defence Scheme cells were told would only be released to them at the point of invasion). It is possible that there may have been germ of truch in the assassination stories, but if so, it probably related to a narrow period of time and was never officially sanctioned. It was dramatic enough, however, for it to be remembered by veterans and embroidered over time, as part of their enduring folklore.
There was a wider context for such supposed action. In June 1940 the Chiefs of Staff had called for the internment of all enemy aliens and members of ‘subversive organisations’ (primarily the Communist Party and British Union of Fascists’) and suggested ‘the most ruthless action should be taken to eliminate any chance of “Fifth Column” activities’. Regional Army HQs repeatedly asked MI5 to release to them its lists of possible fifth columnists for arrest and on 9 June MI5’s head of counter-espionage, Guy Liddell, recorded in his diary: ‘The fighting services are becoming more and more restive about the 5th Column. In some cases they are taking the matter into their own hands, but generally the wrong cases.’ On 20 June he recorded that in Eastern Command ‘The military seem to be taking the law into their own hands. . . . Some of the local units appear to have prepared a kind of Black List of their own. When the balloon goes up they intend to round up or shoot all these individuals. The position is so serious that something of very drastic kind will have to be done.’ The risks were obvious when Liddell recorded on 24 June: 'Maude [John Maude, MI5 officer] has discovered that the military, particularly the 55th Division in the Eastern Counties, have badgered the local police into giving them a list of people with whose bona fides they are not altogether satisfied. If and when the balloon goes up the military intend to take the law into their own hands and arrest these people. We have got hold of these lists which do not seem to have much in the way of a common-sense basis. One man’s only crime appears to be that he is a dentist'. The concern of MI5 was not least because its agents had widely infiltrated potential fifth-column groups and might have been caught up in any vigilante purge.
The Auxiliary Units were NOT issued with the silenced Colt Woodman or Hi-Standard .22 pistols, as commercially available in 1940 and issued to SOE (and later CIA).
The absence from the Auxiliary Units armoury of such an easily-available silenced pistol, ideal for short-range assassination, suggests that such a role was not a priority.
As their Intelligence offciers were based at Divisional and Corps HQs, It is possible that in 1940 some Auxiliary Units patrols became unofficially caught up in this paranoia. There is no evidence that any such instruction came from Auxiliary Units HQ. In the summer of 1940 the inheritance of the more ruthless Section D of SIS was still strong. Jim Caws, an auxilier from the Isle of Wight, claimed they were taught to brutally deal with fifth columnists: ‘We could either sort of tear them to bits to start with or shoot them first and then tear them to bits. . . . The purpose of that, I presume, was that if someone was helping the Germans and you could catch up with them we would make a mess of them and leave them on the side of the road to deter other people from doing it.’ Such treatment was not confined to dealing with fifth columnists. In Worcestershire, the Intelligence Officer, former SIS officer John Todd, arranged for a local butcher to demonstrate the technique of evisceration, to be used against German sentries in order to unsettle their comrades. Such barbaric suggestions were not novel but followed suggestions in SIS’s 1939 D Scheme for European Resistance for dealing with captured members of the Gestapo. Arguing agains there being any official policy of planning assassination, it is significant that the Auxiliary Units were not issued with a silenced pistol, as commerically available in 1940 and later issued to SOE (used in the 1944 'ratweek' when there was a coordinaated campaign of assassination of collaborators). By 1941, the situation in Britain was calmer and the Auxiliary Units had been more fully absorbed within the military sensibilities. The Patrol Leader’s training course now cautioned them against the temptation to be bloodthirsty but it seems likely that the foundation of the modern legend of Auxiliary Units assassins had already been laid. It was added to when David Lampe in 1968 described the issue to the Auxiliary Units of silenced .22 rifles as being 'sinister' assassination weapons. This is despite them being wholly unsuited to the task and with the issue being only from April 1942, at a time when the Auxiliary Units were moving away from their covert anti-invasion role towards acting as reconnaissance units for the Home Guard (although veteran accounts still tend to continue a focus on their more dramatic 1940 anti-invasion role).
The weapons available to the Auxiliary Units for quiet killing in 1940 were comparatively crude, such as a wooden club or cheap Rodgers sheath knife. The specialist Fasirbairn Sykes fighting knife was not introduced until 1941 and they were never issued with a commercially-available silenced pistol, as used by SOE.
.22 silenced rifles were not issued until 1942. Even then, they were a miscellany of types rather than being chosen for their accuracy or range (especially when used with the underpowered service ammunition). Neither were they special high velocity rifles as some veterans were told. The telescopic sights were regarded as a mistake, even before the first issue contact was completed.(Winchester Model 69 pictured, probably the most common Auxiliary Units .22 rifle)
Of most genuine concern was anyone who knew the location of their hidden Operational Basess. When a patrol member asked to resign from Jehu (Alfrick) Patrol in Worcestershire because of stress, the Intelligence Officer (former SIS offcier John Todd) politely shook his hand and wished him well – but then told the patrol sergeant that he would have to be killed if the invasion occurred. Similarly, Charlie Mason of South Cave Patrol in Yorkshire recounted problems with a nosy gamekeeper and maintained ‘That when the invasion comes, not if it comes, to get rid of him, to eliminate him, to booby trap him, certainly to eliminate him! We would eliminate anyone who threatened our existence, put our hide or existence in jeopardy.’ Caught up in post-war bravado, some auxiliers have gone further and claimed that they were ready to assassinate men such as the local Chief Constable because they might know their identities. Even their own Intelligence Officers and Group Commasndere have been enthusisatically suggested as possible targets!
Such claims ignores the fact that knowledge of the uniformed Auxiliers extended much further than the local auxiliers realised at the time - or cared to admit to later researchers. The initial idea of the Auxiliary Units was that they would be organised by the local LDV with Auxiliary Unit staff merely acting as advisers. Their existence was therefore widely broadcast to LDV commanders by the first CO, Colin Gubbins. Checks on prospective auxiliers were carried out by local police via requests from Home Guard Battalion COs to the local Chief Constable – all of whome might therefore be considered security risks. Their identities were then posted in Part II Orders under Home Guard Company establishments - with Home Guard Company Commanders also consequently aware of their existence. What of cases such as at Sandown on the Isle of Wight where three members of the local patrol were recruited in July 1941 from the Hawksworth unit of the Auxiliary Fire Service? The Chief Fire Officer, Wilfred Brown, duly recorded in the Station log that these men were joining the ‘Home Guard Patrol Section’ and in such a small and close-knit working community it seems improbable that other colleagues were not aware of the reasons for their departure. The HQ of the Worcestershire Auxiliary Units was in the Van Moppe’s diamond factory at Wolverton Hall where the workers were well aware that some form of clandestine operations were based. One worker later admitted ‘The Van Moppes were working for the intelligence service, we did not know officially but you would be daft if you did not realise something was going on in the cellar’. The patrols met at the local pub after training, still covered in mud - despite this also being requented by the local Home Guard. Most of the patrols were based in small rural villages where it would be naïve to believe that secrets did not become known and sometimes a whole community were clearly aware of their existence. One patrol from Stobswood, near Morpeth, was remembered after the war as the ‘Death or Glory Boys’ who frequented a local public house. One night the locals eyes popped when a ‘Glory Boy’ walked in none too subtly with hand grenades dangling from his belt, .45 Colt revolvers strapped on each leg and a sub-machine gun over his shoulder. Unfortunately, more OBs were discovered by the general public than the men would have liked. The Intelligence Officer for the Home Guard in Hailsham, Sussex had to ‘hush up’ the report by a puzzled Home Guardsman who had discovered the Hellingly Patrol OB in Park Wood, Lower Dicker.Rolvenden OB in Kent was discovered by two local girls who were walking through the wood and saw a light shining from the tunnel of the emergency escape exit. The most serious security breach occurred in the Kent Auxiliary Units where a somewhat relaxed air began to develop during 1943. .In December 1943 there was a serious security breach in ‘Parsnip’ Patrol in Petham. The unspecified incident resulted in the patrol being disbanded and the entire membership returned to the Home Guard and their OB then sealed. If all the tales of supposed plans for assassination are to be believed - how many such people would have been murdered and what would have been the response of the civil and military authorities? There is an echo of such problems in the suppression of the continental 'Gladios' (part trained by SIS) during the Cold War after some cells went rogue and mounted their own terror campaign.
It seems most likely that if there is a basis of fact in the legend of Auxiliary Units assassins, it lies in a short unofficial period of enthusiasm during the early summer of 1940 whilst SIS influence was still strong and the Intelligence Officers had a greated independence, before the organisation was fully absorbed into the military establishment. Although officially quashed, the memory has survived as an eminently repeatable tale to be related to family and researchers years after the event.
Based upon pp.101-104 in Britain's Guerrilla Army (2024)