Andrew Chatterton

So all those people.

Six or seven people.

So Jennifer told me, so the daughter, Irene's daughter, Jennifer said, basically I didn't believe what mum was saying, but then I was thinking about my childhood and she suddenly some stories from, you know, memories from her childhood started to make sense.

In the fifties, a pots and pans salesman came to their house and her mum was like a, you know, wouldn't say boo to a goose, lovely,

housewife this pots and pans salesman was really aggressive in his sales pattern put his foot in the door so her mum couldn't shut it and then Jennifer remembers this pots and pans salesman basically sailing through the air because her mum had performed some kind of unarmed combat move on him and suddenly all her staff started to make sense without how the hell did she know how to do that

So there's another lady called Priscilla Ross in Hornchurch.

She was 18 in 1940.

She said almost exactly the same as Irene Lockley, taught how to make Molotov cocktails, how to derail trains, how to use the grot.

her little base was in a church in Hornchurch.

And to gain access to it, there was one of the gravestones in the graveyard.

You push over and that opened it.

You had stairs going out and there'd be like a secret crypt under the church.

And that's where those guys were based.

And these tend to be in towns and villages where the Yorkshire units tend to be in the countryside a bit more.

So yeah, this is right on top of occupation.

I think there's a few things, I think.

So one, they all signed the Official Secrets Act, and they're of that generation of, if I sign the Official Secrets Act, I am not telling anyone.

For the auxiliary units particularly, if you think about the first people they would have to assassinate,

local policeman, intelligence officer, people who have accidentally found your bunker, an elderly couple, that's not something in the 50s or late 40s that you're going to boast about and tell people.

There's an element of guilt about that as well.