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The units (occasionally known as the British Resistance Organisation) were initiated by Winston Churchill, who appointed Major Colin Gubbins (an expert in guerrilla warfare who would later head up the Special Operations Executive), to found them, attached to GHQ Home Forces .
During the summer of 1940 approximately 5000 units were formed, consisting of Special Duty Sections, Signals and Operational Patrols. Auxiliary Unit members were vetted by a senior local police chief (who, according to sealed orders given to the Operational Patrols to be opened only in case of invasion, were allegedly to be assassinated to prevent the membership of the Auxiliary Units being revealed).
The units were stood down only in November 1944. Their existence did not generally become known by the public until the 1990s.
The Special Duty Sections were largely recruited from the civilian population, with around 4000 members. They had been trained to identify vehicles, high ranking officers and military units, and were to gather intelligence and leave reports in dead letter drops. From these they would be collected by runners and taken to one of over 200 secret radio transmitters operated by trained civilian Signals staff.
Operational Patrols consisted of between 4 and 8 men, often farmers or landowners and usually recruited from the most able members of the Home Guard, who also needed an excellent local knowledge and the ability to live off the land. As cover, the men were allocated to "Home Guard" battalions 201 ( Scotland), 202 (northern England), or 203 (southern England) and provided with Home Guard uniforms, though they were not actually Home Guard units.
Around 3500 such men were trained on weekend courses at Coleshill House near Highworth , WiltshireWiltshire (abbreviated Wilts is a large southern English county. Considered as a ceremonial county it borders those of Hampshire, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire, and contains the unitary authority of Swindon. Wiltshire is a m, in the arts of guerrilla warfare including assassination, unarmed combat, demolition and sabotageDisambiguation This article is about Sabotage the destructive action. The term sabotage can also refer to: an early Black Sabbath album ( Sabotage), a Alfred Hitchcock film ( Sabotage), a Beastie Boys song, or a type of shock site. Sabotage is a deliberat. Recruits for Coleshill reported to the Highworth post office, from where the postmistress Mabel Stranks arranged for their collection.
Each Patrol was a self contained cell, expected to be self sufficient and operationally autonomous in the case of invasion, generally operating within a 15 mile radius. They were provided with a concealed underground Operational Base, usually built by the Royal EngineersThe Corps of Royal Engineers (RE), commonly known as the Sappers is one of the corps of the British Army. It provides combat engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces. The Regimental Headquarters and the Royal School of Military in a local woodland, with a camouflaged entrance and emergency escape tunnel; it is thought that 400 to 500 such OBs were constructed. Some Patrols had an additional concealed Observation Post. Patrols were also provided with a selection of the latest weapons including a silenced sniper's rifle and Fairbairn-SykesWilliam Ewart Fairbairn (1885-1960) was a soldier, police officer, and exponent of hand-to-hand combat methods for the Shanghai police between the World Wars, and allied special forces in World War II. He served with the Royal Marine Light Infantry starti "commando" knives, quantities of plastic explosivePlastic explosive (or plastique) is a specialised form of explosive material. They are soft and hand malleable and may have the added benefit of being usable over a wider temperature range than the pure explosive. Plastic explosives are especially suited, incendiary devices, and food to last for two weeks. It was not expected that they would survive for longer. Members expected to be shot if they were captured, and were expected to shoot themselves first.
The mission of the units was to attack invading forces from behind their own lines while conventional forces fell back to the last-ditch GHQ LineThe GHQ Line was a defence line built in the United Kingdom during World War II to contain an expected German invasion. The British Army had abandoned most of its equipment in France after the Dunkirk evacuation. It was therefore decided to build a static. Aircraft, fuel dumps, railway lines, and depots were high on the list of targets, as were senior German officers. Patrols secretly reconnoitred local country houses, which might be used by German officers, in preparation.