Talk - ‘Dad’s Secret Army in Sussex’

On 14th May 1940 Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War, sent a message to the nation on the Home Service, calling for volunteers to help with the defence of the country. “Within 24 hours,” recalls Professor Norman MacKenzie, “250,000 men had joined up.” This made the LDV (later to be known as the Home Guard) as big as the regular army. “At first it was rather like the TV programme Dad’s Army,” continues MacKenzie. “But after a while it became very well organised and equipped. 9,000 men were involved in Sussex, 1,000 of them in Lewes. Lewes Police Station became the HQ for the whole county.”

As the threat of invasion loomed, the home defence strategy became more complex, and MacKenzie’s talk will focus on a secret war office plan in which special auxiliary units, nicknamed ‘stay-behinds’, were trained up and equipped to be the nucleus of a resistance movement if Britain were invaded. “These top secret units were the prototype of the later resistance movements on the continent,“ says MacKenzie, who played a part in setting them up. “They were instigated by General Gubbins who moved onto the SOE to organise resistance movements in occupied countries. This was the first time a resistance movement was set up not after a country was overrun, but before.” The units, formed from specially selected resourceful citizens with skills which could be utilised in such a situation (quarrymen, farriers, farmers, motor mechanics etc) were formed in ‘patrols’ of 6-10 men, completely separate from the Home Guard. “Someone joked they were a combination of gamekeepers and guttersnipes,“ says MacKenzie. “This was top secret information until very recently because many bunkers were still operational and the official Secrets act concealed them until the Cold War was over.”