The British Resistance: The true story of the secret guerilla army of shopkeepers and farmworkers trained to defy the Nazis in a suicidal last stand



On a clear day, you can see 11 English and Welsh counties not to mention the Bristol Channel from this ridge. No wonder the men of ‘Jonah’ Patrol of 202 Battalion, Home Guard had their operational base up here in these Monmouthshire hills.



Their accommodation was less spectacular, though. And I am sitting in it. Six men would have squeezed into this damp chamber six feet below the forest floor.



It was so well-built that most of it is still here, unmarked and unvandalised. But the occupants would not have had to put up with it for long once it became operational. Because their life expectancy was less than a fortnight.

The haunting new film, Resistance, released this week, is set in 1944 and invites that profound question: What would you have done during World War II?

These were the men of the Auxiliary Units, volunteers equipped with some of the most dangerous and advanced weaponry available to any infantry during World War II.



Formed in 1940, at Britain’s lowest ebb, their task was simple but unsung.



In the event of a German invasion of Britain, they were to melt away from their civilian jobs to activate OBs (operational bases) just like this one and sabotage enemy installations for as long as possible before detection — and inevitable death.

In addition to their Commando daggers and machine guns, they had gelignite and nitro-glycerine ‘sticky’ bombs for slapping on the side of advancing tanks.



Their grenades came with four-second fuses, unlike the standard seven-second variety used by the regular Army (greatly increasing the risk to the thrower but reducing the prospect of one being thrown back). And every unit was issued with one extra, unusual piece of kit: a gallon of rum.



This was not for recreational use. Not only were Auxiliary Units given a life expectancy of 12 days, but they were also under orders not to be captured. If surrounded, they would need to shoot each other or blow themselves up with their own explosives. The rum might have helped.



Little wonder that, once the threat of invasion had receded, many of these men went on to join another secretive new formation — the Special Air Service.



Like so many members of so many World War II secret operations, the Auxiliaries remained silent and unrecognised for years afterwards. Even when their role was finally disclosed, they were often portrayed as little more than a leaner, meaner version of Dad’s Army.



The story of the Auxiliary Unit guerillas makes for a compelling adventure through stunning countryside on the Welsh/English borders

Yet, had there been a German invasion, these men would have been the backbone of the British resistance. And that grim but gripping scenario is the setting for the haunting new film, Resistance, released this week. Don’t expect Captain Mainwaring.



Starring Andrea Riseborough and Michael Sheen, it is set in 1944 and invites that profound question: what would you have done?

D-Day has failed, the Germans have invaded and, one morning, the women of a remote Welsh valley awake to find that their men have disappeared in the night.



Soon afterwards, a German unit arrives to occupy the area and the woman are confronted with some brutal choices about where their loyalties lie, while the presence of those vanished menfolk hangs in the air like a Welsh mist.



Like the novel of the same name by Owen Sheers (who co-wrote the screenplay), it is set and filmed entirely in the Black Mountains around his native Abergavenny. Not a single scene was shot in a studio.



Director Amit Gupta tells me he even accommodated all the German actors away from the rest of the cast in the home of a local landowner to get them bonding like an occupying garrison.



All the extras were recruited locally and there is a creepy authenticity as the residents gather for the local country fair, complete with gymkhana, tea tents — and swastikas draped over the marquees.



It has all generated tremendous excitement across the region. The Abergavenny Museum has opened an excellent exhibition dedicated to ‘The British Resistance in Wales’ and, this week, the town staged its first royal film premiere when the Prince of Wales came to launch the film at Abergavenny’s Baker Street cinema.



Yet the excitement is not simply because a rural community suddenly finds itself on the big screen. It is because many people are discovering the extraordinary story of the secret guerilla army which once lay ready to pounce in these parts.

Not only were Auxiliary Units given a life expectancy of 12 days, but they were also under orders not to be captured

Among those at the premiere was the widow of one of the men who inspired Owen Sheers to write Resistance in the first place.



George Vater had been just 17 when he was recruited as an observer for an Auxiliary cell run by a local vicar (who used the lightning conductor on his steeple as a radio antenna).



Although the enemy never landed, George knew what could be required of him at any minute. All the Auxiliaries were sent for training in martial arts, sabotage and silent killing at Coleshill House, a secluded stately home in Wiltshire.



Yet men like George had to endure taunts — and even the odd fight — throughout the war from those who objected to the sight of a healthy young man not ‘doing his bit’.



Then again, his family scolded him for his constant late nights while his girlfriend became exasperated by his refusal to attend Saturday night dances.



In fact, he was just training. Many Auxiliaries had the same experience but they all were, of course, forbidden from talking about it.



Their story, though, makes for a compelling adventure through stunning countryside on the Welsh/English borders. Monmouthshire was an area of particularly intense Auxiliary activity, given the concentration of railways, mines and munitions factories adjacent to some very rugged countryside.



The Monmouthshire Auxiliaries were recruited by an eccentric intelligence officer called John Todd whose attempts at blending in can hardly have been helped by his clunking alias — ‘Tommy Atkins’. He would gather potential candidates in a Newport pub with some bogus story.



After plying them with beer, he would see who peeled off to relieve themselves and strike them off his list.



‘These weak-bladdered sorts cannot be trusted,’ he told one (strong-bladdered) Auxiliary, Les Vick.



Those who eventually passed muster would then have to sign the Official Secrets Act and undergo training at Coleshill.

Back at home, using the Home Guard as cover for their absences, they were divided into small and entirely independent patrols. In Monmouthshire, the county network used biblical codenames.



On a tree-lined ridge high above the village of Langstone, I meet Sallie Mugford, local historian and a member of the Coleshill Auxiliary Research Team, which runs a fascinating website dedicated to all the Auxiliary units.



Sallie joined after discovering that her grandfather, Les Bulley, and great uncle, Charles Bulley, had both been members of the Langstone patrol, known as ‘Jonah’.



‘They never told me about it and my grandmother died without even knowing,’ says Sallie as she leads me through this bit of Wentwood Forest with its panoramic views of both England and Wales.



‘That was one of their ammunition stores,’ she says pointing to nothing in particular.

The Monmouthshire Auxiliaries were recruited by an eccentric intelligence officer called John Todd

Beneath a mass of dead branches and a carpet of leaves she clears a hole through which I can feel a metal grille. We pull it up to reveal a shaft leading down to a partially blocked archway.



Beyond it is a room the size of a lockup where ‘Jonah’ would have stored enough kit to blow up an airfield or railway. The entrance is so full of mud and leaves that it will take a fair bit of digging to get inside, so we decide to replace the grill, the branches and then the leaves. Sallie likes to keep it all covered up.



‘We have had these registered as scheduled monuments but we don’t want people to abuse them,’ she explains.



Another ammo store nearby was so well-hidden that it was unearthed only two weeks ago. At least all the weapons were cleared out as soon as the Auxiliaries were disbanded in 1944. Otherwise, it might have been a high-explosive version of Tutankhamun’s Tomb.



Further on, Sallie steers me off another path and we come across an open hole leading down to Jonah’s main Operational Base six feet below ground. The outer chamber is partially collapsed but the main room is much as it was.



A ceiling of arched corrugated iron is dripping with damp but the brick walls are in good condition. Hundreds of these hideouts were built all over Britain by Royal Engineers brought in from different regions. They would have no idea of what they were building for whom, or even where they were.



But these were no mere dugouts.



They were carefully chosen for proximity to a natural water supply and to roads, so that there would be no awkward questions if the occupants were seen nearby. They also boasted some clever ventilation arrangements.



This one has an ingenious airpipe disappearing up the hollow trunk of an adjacent tree. If there is a Heath Robinson feel to some of the design, it was all deadly serious.

‘I feel very proud of the fact that my grandfather was prepared to fight and die up here,’ says Sallie.



Half an hour away, I discover another bunker that is ready for action 70 years on. This was the headquarters of the Usk patrol, codenamed ‘Esau’. During the war it was sited in a deep thicket near the main road between England and Wales.



Today, it adjoins an eco-friendly ‘natural burial ground’ — an unmarked cemetery grazed by cows — owned by Henry Humphreys, the engagingly eccentric squire of Usk Castle. As a boy, he would play inside this secret chamber. In recent years, though, he has restored it to its wartime condition.



This site even features briefly in the film. Three captured Auxiliaries, flushed out of this hole, are shot in the head here (presumably, before they had a chance to drink their gallon of rum and pip their executioners to the post). It would certainly have been a claustrophobic billet.



The only way in is by crawling along a 30ft pipe reached through a trapdoor in the side of a hillock. It’s filthy and uncomfortable but leads to an impressive double chamber where the men of ‘Esau’ would have eaten their tinned food, grabbed some kip in rudimentary bunk beds and plotted their next raid on the enemy.



‘They were this great mix of gamekeepers, poachers, people who really knew the land — many of them quite bad hats,’ explains Henry.



‘They had to be able to find their way across the area to their various ammo stores at night with no torch.’



He goes on: ‘Even in daylight, I still have trouble finding them.’



A few miles away, at the ancient Greyhound Inn near the village of Llantrisant, there is still an intriguing reminder of these men.



On a wall is a photograph of the ‘stand down’ dinner which the Monmouthshire Auxiliaries held here at the end of 1944 shortly after Churchill had disbanded the network (with no further prospect of invasion, there was no need for a free-range, heavily-armed resistance).



The men of ‘Jonah’ and ‘Esau’ and all the other patrols are in the picture in their civilian clothes, looking as respectable as a gathering of Rotarians.



But local historian Richard Frame steers me to a framed copy of the menu card which is full of giveaway code (the drinks are ‘Cordtex’ and ‘Red Line’ — both bits of bomb-making equipment).



It is one of the great ‘What If’ stories of the war. Could men like this have seriously hampered a German invasion? And how would the civilian population have reacted to the inevitable Nazi reprisals?



They may not have been forced to answer these questions but there is no doubt that they were ready and willing.



‘They were undoubtedly heroic men with the very latest equipment,’ says Owen Sheers.

‘And they had a very slim chance of survival.’



Nor were they under any illusions. Les Vick summed up their attitude in an interview with a researcher a few years ago.

