Andrew Chatterton

In Kent.

He was recruiting farmers and gamekeepers, and he was teaching them how to use explosives, a bit more organized than MI6 were doing it.

And eventually they merged these two groups, and these became the auxiliary units.

And then they were...

basically extended the length of the country, so in the vulnerable counties, so mainly the east side, so all the way from the Orkneys down the east side of Scotland, northeast coast, southeast corner, south coast, north coast of the west country and south Wales.

There's nothing very much on the west side, all imagining that the invasion was going to come from mainland Europe.

So there's about six and a half thousand men recruited into these groups and their role.

So they all signed the Official Secrets Act.

An intelligence officer would go to a county.

He would pick what they called a key man.

So someone like a farmer or a landowner, someone with a bit of sway and a few contacts.

It would be up to then the key man to recruit his own patrol.

And there are about six to eight men in each patrol.

He would recruit people that he knew and trusted, so relatives or colleagues or friends.

And all these guys had an intimate understanding of the countryside around them.

They could move at night.

They could get around fields in the dark and stuff like that.

Then once he had his patrol sorted, they would then choose an area to dig a secret underground base.

So... Oh, my gosh.

Around the country, I think there must be about... A lot of them have been destroyed, but there must have been about 600, 700 underground bases the length of the country.