Corporal Frank Hannaford in Churchill's Secret Army

In the summer of 1940, when invasion seemed inevitable, Colonel Colin Gubbins formed the intentionally blandly named Auxiliary Units. He sent out Intelligence Officers to the Southern and Eastern coastal counties to recruit civilian men to form patrols that would have become the British Resistance had Britain been invaded. They all signed the Official Secrets Act although were still civilians. Highly trained and equipped with all the latest explosives, booby traps and close combat weapons, they were to act as saboteurs against an invading army.

Upon invasion they would have left their homes and their families and operated out of secret underground dug outs that they would have lived and slept in using their skills to hamper a German advance by disrupting supply routes. Their life expectancy was 2 weeks. At the end of the war they received a letter stating they would get no public recognition for what they would have been prepared to do. They were able to purchase a small lapel badge that displayed the invented battalion numbers that had been given.

Being capable, country folk, Frank Hannaford was recruited and he soon signed up his eldest sons Herb and John and his brother-in-law Frank Williams. Had we been invaded, Grandmother Mable would have woken up to find her husband, two sons and brother just disappeared and her own life in danger as she would not be able to explain where they had gone once their activities started to havoc. Thankfully they were not needed.