Churchill’s Nazi ‘kill lists’ for covert army

In 1940, after the Dunkirk evacuation, when Britain faced the threat of invasion by Hitler’s army, Winston Churchill gave his famous “We Shall Fight” speech. It contained clues to a covert resistance organisation with “kill lists” of local Nazi collaborators and betrayal suspects to be actioned if German troops landed.

Thousands of men and women were trained alongside SOE/SAS recruits. They were then fully armed and sent to build secret underground operations bases in the countryside. Each hideout could house around seven operatives. If Germany invaded Britain, church bells would be the signal for the British Auxiliary Force (BAF) to wear Home Guard uniforms, hide in their underground bases and live off the land. When the enemy arrived in their area, a BAF unit was to conduct guerrilla warfare.

Some units held sealed lists of known Nazi collaborators. “Kill lists” also included vicars, police and any residents who might have spotted BAF patrol groups or their secret bases and betray them, under torture, to the Germans.

They had to be liquidated immediately under official orders – the first “licence to kill” Double-O operatives, 13 years before the first James Bond book was published. 

Spies and radio operators

Churchill had defiantly told the British Parliament: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

He planned that the Royal Navy and RAF would counter German invaders, the Regular Army and the Home Guard (aka Dad’s Army) would defend Britain’s shores. But, if the Germans managed an invasion, the newly formed BAF force of specially recruited landowners, gamekeepers, poachers and farm workers would fight them in the local countryside. In some areas, vicars, doctors, military reservists, and Girl Guides trained as spies, messengers, and radio operators. All were unpaid volunteers, while recruits from mainstream military units kept their regular pay.

They were trained intensively in the latest weapons, explosives, sabotage, unarmed combat and guerrilla warfare. Had Britain been invaded, BAF would have created mayhem and disrupted German supply lines.

Auxiliary units hid in secret underground operational bases (OBs) concealed in woods and riverbanks. Friends and families of recruits had no idea they were training in guerrilla warfare, undertaking night-time patrols and holding Double O licences to kill.

Official secrets revealed

A new recruit, Eric Johnston, joined the Ashburnham Patrol led by Peter Wilcox, the manager of the nearby Hooe Farm. After being shown the Official Secrets Act, Eric Johnston was told, “If anything happened to us, we would be absolutely on our own.” Johnston and his new colleagues were responsible for the Sussex coastal area, which included Battle Abbey, the site of the most famous enemy invasion of Britain.

The BAF never had to fire a shot in anger and was disbanded at the end of the war. It remained hush-hush until classified papers were eventually released. Since then, families have been discovering they had ancestors who served in the force under orders not to reveal membership by careless talk or unit photographs. 

Covert army story continues after IMAGE GALLERY

Wartime family secret

A telephone call from a military researcher revealed Dr Hugh Frostick’s father, Charles, had signed up in 1940 and had been active for most of World War II with the rank of corporal.

Dr Frostick said: “I had no idea my father had served until the phone call, which came out of the blue. I was unaware of the secret army, but now I am helping to find other members and their stories.”

His father was in the Mistley/Horsley Cross Patrol in  North Essex, with a hideout near the banks of the River Stour. Dr Frostick is trying to identify and research all the other men in the North Essex and South Suffolk patrols. 

Vicarage became county HQ

Essex County,  with its long coastline, was a likely target for German sea landings. It had 34 BAF patrol groups organised by Major Andrew Croft, the Arctic explorer and decorated special services soldier. His father, Robert, was the Vicar at Kelvedon, whose vicarage was one of four successive Essex HQs. 

Wivenhoe Park, the wartime headquarters for the British army’s SOE/SAS operations, was also a BAF training centre. Operatives trained in the use of plastic explosives, time pencil detonators, weapons, sabotage techniques, how to kill silently and build and survive in an underground operational base.

Check if you have a secret army relative/ancestor

Families who suspect an ancestor might have served in this British auxiliary force should search attics, basements or outbuildings for: 

• Copy of “1939 Countryman’s Diary” (disguised guerrilla warfare manual). 
• Small radio set with two large knobs and a Morse tapper on the top.
• Tripwire, booby traps, timer pencil detonators, plastic explosives.
• Colt revolvers, Fairbairn daggers, knuckle dusters.
• Powerful magnets for attaching bombs to tanks. 
• Boxes of .22 &.38 ammunition, hand grenades (Handle with care).
• A .22 Winchester sniper’s rifle with telescopic sight and silencer.

Landowners, ramblers and dog walkers should watch out for copper wire (signals radio aerials) threaded into the bark of tall trees on hillsides and clay pipe ventilators nearby. These indicate there may be an underground OB close by. Known BAF hideouts were destroyed after the war for health and safety reasons.

UPDATE

Capt Peter Fleming was appointed commander of the newly established British Auxiliary Force after experience with the Norwegian resistance. His brother, Commander Ian Fleming, served as an assistant to Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence. He created James Bond and the Double-O licence to kill in the secret service as featured in his books and subsequent movies. 

Several of the operation bases accessed by trapdoors were inadvertently discovered during the war; one of them in a wood near Great Leighs, Essex, by a courting couple. They suddenly felt the ground begin to move beneath them. When they found out why, in some alarm, they notified the police, who, in turn, notified the Army, and that hideout was no longer used.

A long-lost World War II bunker built by “Churchill’s secret army” has been discovered in southern Scotland by Forestry and Land Scotland workers who uncovered an iron door. It belonged to the British Auxiliary Units, also referred to as “Churchill’s Secret Army” by Historic UK.  “The bunker was built during WWII as operational bases for auxiliary units tasked with sabotage opera­tions in the event of invasion,” AOC Archaeology wrote on its website. “Bunkers of this type are rarely rediscovered because their precise locations were kept secret and most have since been buried and lost.”

The bunker was accessible from the east via an access hatch. It had a second escape hatch on the west. The main space is made of corru­gated iron sheets over a cement floor, approximately 23 feet long and 10 feet wide. A “blast wall” separates the main bunker space and other rooms, as well as a 12.5-inch ventilation pipe. The hideout is buried approximately four feet below the surface, AOC Archaeology added.

In June 2025, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said all citizens of the UK will have to play a part in the defence of the nation, as he launched the government’s strategic defence review. He floated the idea of a “People’s Army” to defend Britain’s shores.

Useful resources and references: “Resisting the Nazi Invader” by Arthur Ward. Details of the known county headquarters of BAF units can be found in the British Resistance Archive. To contribute to ongoing research, contact The Gerry Holdsworth Special Forces Charity, set up in 1989 to help preserve and promote the heritage of the wartime Special Operations Executive (SOE) and related special forces.

ancestor true story ancestry stories ancestry writing Churchill covert army Devon Essex family history family search heritage blog heritage stories Hitler new authors publish free SAS SOE WW2