by PAUL RICHARD HUARD

In 1940, Ted Jefferies was a 13-year-old British lad who wanted to do his bit for king and country in World War II.

As a Boy Scout, Jefferies could have contented himself with an ordinary role such as collecting scrap metal or growing extra food in a garden.

Instead, he became a secret messenger for the British guerrilla fighters who would have harassed German occupiers, killed collaborators and offered a last-ditch defense if the Third Reich had invaded England as Adolf Hitler had originally planned.

Armed only with a Fairbairn-Sykes commando dagger and shod in roller skates for speed, he actually delivered classified messages for the training center that prepared the volunteer units for the fateful day … should it come.

And in doing all this, Jefferies put to good use traditional Scouting skills, skills taught in a movement founded by a British war hero and former spy who transferred military methods and tactics for crack reconnaissance patrols to a boys’ organization that emphasized patriotism and preparedness.

At right—Ted Jefferies in 2008. Photo courtesy of the Coleshill Auxiliary Research Team. At top—Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout movement, drew this sketch in 1908 of a lance-wielding Boy Scout as St. George, the patron saint of Great Britain and all military men. Public domain photo

Jefferies died in 2014. There’s not much public info about how he got recruited or who recruited him—an all-too-common situation historians work hard to remedy as members of a little-known World War II covert force die of old age.

“All of those who volunteered signed the Official Secrets Act and told no one of their involvement, not even close family members,” Andrew Chatterton, a spokesman for the Coleshill Auxiliary Research Team, said in a written statement.

“Most never revealed their participation even after the war, taking their secrets to the grave,” Chatterton added.

Ironically, Jefferies was too young to sign the secrecy document, which serves as reminder that British subjects who reveal national security information can face stiff fines and jail terms. In lieu of the Official Secrets Act, he promised on his Scout Oath not to reveal his involvement with the resistance forces known as Auxiliary Units.

The Auxiliary Units were groups of civilian volunteers who would have formed the resistance had the Germans invaded Great Britain, according to Tom Sykes, founder of the British Resistance Archive at Coleshill, the location of the former British training base for the “stay behind” units.

The units were made up of men unable to serve in regular forces due to age or war-work restrictions. Each had intimate knowledge of the local countryside.

Volunteers were often farmers and farm workers, gamekeepers and hunters. The units were the brainchild of Winston Churchill, then prime minister of Great Britain, who ordered specialists in guerrilla warfare to train members in demolitions, the use of small arms such as the Sten gun and silent killing with weapons like the commando dagger and a suppressed .22-caliber sniping rifle.

“They were small groups of highly trained, well-armed men who in the event of invasion would disappear to their operational bases hidden beneath the British countryside,” Sykes told War Is Boring.

“Their aim was to disrupt the German advance: Blow up ammo dumps, railway lines, bridges and destroy as many supplies as possible basically to buy us and our allies time.”