A Little History (common to many people today)

During the latter part of WW II it was decided to implement a secret strategy which is so similar to what a number of people are doing today, it needs mentioning; and this was the final defence of the country if Germany won the war and a few men would go off grid and fight the Germans using guerrilla tactics.
Most of these men were anonymous and the type of men nobody would give a second thought to and as most were married it was so secretive that in most cases their wives did not even know what they were doing and they all had to have one common skill which was to survive totally off grid at any time of the year. They had to build a shelter and equip it using what they had and these were nearly always underground and in such obscure locations that they would not be found and they could not be seen and a single man could comfortably survive for a couple of weeks and this was a second criteria, they could disappear without people noticing they were gone or work in professions were they could be away from home for a couple of a weeks and the idea was to put the Germans to sleep as they were doing nothing unusual or out of the ordinary. Many of these men were older and not in the army or forces and a number were retired so they allegedly had time on their hands while the rest were people living and working in the country such as woodsmen or farmers as their presence in the country wouldn’t attract attention or look out of place and even their neighbours and friends wouldn’t be suspicious. They would plan and prepare a shelter, usually deep enough underground as not to attract attention of be detected by sniffer dogs and be safe from falling bombs unless it was a direct hit and be large enough to accommodate a single man who could work and cook as well as keep warm in the coldest winters and not leave tracks or a trail to this shelter and many shelters were dug by a single man, by hand, and constructed using bomb damaged buildings debris where they would be blatant but secret.

Many men would dig a trench and cover it with timbers from bombed out houses and it would be the width of their intended shelter and to the depth of their intended depth, once this ditch was dug they simply laid wood over it and covered it with surrounding materials to stop it looking out of place. Once their trench was established and covered they could leave a spade and buckets there and as they enlarged the hole they took the soil in buckets and spread it around, often some considerable distance from their excavation and used the timbers to cover it and often laid a tarpaulin over it and covered it with moss, leaves, and natural vegetation. This wasn’t unusual as many men salvaged bombed out housing materials and it was normal for a man with a wheelbarrow of bricks and a few timbers on top to be walking home with his salvage and this wasn’t classed as looting which was a hanging offence and they did hang people for looting and made it very public. Usually these men would have a small and insignificant building project on the go at home as cover and a partly built brick wall was common as the wall may need 1000 bricks but the men would salvage several thousand from different places so as to not arouse suspicion; they would take them home and clean them up and keep the chipped off mortar as this had a use. They had sand and cement at home and this was taken to site in hand carried bags in small quantities and bricks were taken in hand carried bags also and nobody noticed this so nothing unusual. They would construct a wall on solid ground in their trench and use half bricks instead of full bricks so when they laid a concrete floor the concrete could be worked into these cavities to support this outer wall and as it was constructed and a section dried it would be coated in bitumen to waterproof it along with the concrete floor. Roof sections were made by casting concrete slabs and laying them on top of the outer wall and once dried they would be covered in soil and natural vegetation and many would have some form of entrance located nearby, they were never straight tunnels from the entrance to their shelter and they were all tight and incorporated a dog leg or similar so the enemy couldn’t shoot along the entrance tunnel and hit the occupant and many were booby trapped to warn of intruders.

Everything was transported by hand and a few bricks in a rucksack or some cement or sand in bags was normal and everything took so long because it was covert and nobody could draw attention to themselves and their activities and once the outer shell was built the inner walls were constructed little by little and they had to be equipped. In a time of war everything was scarce and they had to beg, steal, or borrow anything they needed and the first was their organisation as one man may lead a team of four other men and only he knew who they were, they never met and another member could be your next door neighbour and you didn’t know it and every member was instructed to shoot and kill their leader if he was compromised, so he couldn’t talk and give up other men. They were located fairly close to their homes so if the Germans won the war they could quickly and covertly get to their shelter and set up camp and they couldn’t be seen or heard and were undetectable and they needed certain essentials such as water and they set up some ingenious systems for harvesting rain water or drawing it from another source and filtering and boiling it before storing it. They were issued with spirit cookers and Zippo lighters and a petrol and flint pack and matches and candles for heat and light along with a quantity of fuel spirit for their stove so they could cook if necessary and their foods were amazing as they were issued with seeds which they would randomly plant so they didn’t look organised or out of place and they grew foods they could cook or eat raw and carrots were a prime example. They took this further by enlisting many men with something called SOE or Special Operations Executive who taught them which plants they could eat and where they could be found and at what time of year they were abundant, so they always had a source of foods. They were taught to plant thorny crops such as blackberries as they concealed and were self setting and had thick stems with large thorns and wouldn’t look out of place in many woods and they bore fruit which could be collected and bottled and they were gives sugar for this. They planted their seeds and learned to hunt, trap, and snare animals and while rabbits/hares were popular, they were also hunted by most of the hungry population to supplement their meat ration and had to hunt other animals such as foxes and of course trap and kill birds and also fish for food and with these basic skills they could survive on what they caught.

They were usually armed and generally this would be with the standard Webley service revolver and many also had shotguns which they could use and the issue with shooting something was twofold as during an occupation the enemy would hear the shots and they were limited on ammunition and they could NOT attract attention to themselves or their hideouts. They were generally trained in guerrilla tactics by the SOE or similar organisations and they were often issued with explosives and detonators and also taught how to make explosives and detonators and a general delayed detonator would be with an aniseed ball which would dissolve in water and allow the contacts to close and cause an explosion. Many were taught subtle tricks such as shaping explosives to give a lot of punch on one point when it was detonated and much of what was taught still remains valid, and taught to this day in general explosives training, guerrilla tactics and general explosives demolition .

Here was the issue, any gun shot or explosion created a huge sound and a sound which would be heard by any enemy and if you undertook any of these actions then they had to count and shooting one man and killing him didn’t count as a productive use of a shot or explosion. An explosion which killed several of the enemy or caused significant disruption to large parts of the infrastructure were deemed as useful and productive as they consumed manpower and materials to put right and both were in short supply, so they got creative and selected other methods to create disruption. One such method was with railway lines as railways were used to transport bulk materials such as tanks over long distances and the vital fuel and food needed to sustain a war and the troops and this involved removing rails under cover of darkness when trains weren’t running as steam trains could not instantly stop and this often derailed them. They got creative and removed a rail near a corner so the train drivers couldn’t see them and this virtually guaranteed derailing them and a derailed train blocked a railway line and disrupted other train movements and the goods they carried, and all without a bang or explosion. Steel was in short supply and a rail contained a lot of steel and if it could be covertly cut up or moved to somewhere such as a metal engineering or blacksmiths shop it would disappear and be turned into many things and the enemy would have to replace it.

This meant men had to know their area infinitely well and in fine detail as their job was to disrupt and cost the enemy as much money as they could and delay things for as long as they could as a gun without ammunition couldn’t fire and tanks or trucks with no fuel are just heavy paperweights. This often meant disruption would be outside their areas to prevent attracting attention to that area and they had a priority of things to attack and disrupt and a number were so simple it belied belief. If a railway ran through a cutting it meant the ground around it was higher and if you could collapse some of that ground onto the railway you stopped rail traffic until it was cleared; if you could collapse a lot of that ground onto the rails you could potentially disrupt if for a few day. If it was rocky terrain and you could get large lumps of heavy rock to fall from a great height you would not just block the railway as the impact would smash sleepers and bend or snap rails and this cost more in resources such as steel which would be diverted away from other things such as armaments as well as getting heavy machinery to move the rocks.

It was basically a matter of scale and if you could damage or disrupt them without using your resources then it was a win, if you could disrupt a major rail artery for several days then you could stop a lot of fighting by disrupting armament, fuel, and food flow so men would be hungry, unable to travel and unable to fight. Railways were an obvious target as they work on the block system of control and that is each section of railway is set into blocks and if a train was in a block another train could not enter it until the block was clear, now imagine the scenario; a derailed train on a single section of track blocks both up and down trains and they also have to stop in their block. With so many trains stopped they could come under attack from other groups and one deliberate derailment could cause damage to many other trains sat stationary in their block and the ultimate was the RAF coordinating with these groups as one fighter loaded with ammunition could fly over all the trains stuck in their blocks and shoot the lot and this equated to a lot of damaged trains. If they attacked the locomotive and they were steam which they nearly all were then one well placed shot could penetrate the boiler and with many running at 150-200 + LBS of steam pressure this was a certain explosion.

Incendiaries were another war breakthrough which were very effective and the 4 Lb incendiary was devised and this consisted of an octagonal tube filled with a detonator and phosphorus and one end was fitted with a cast iron weight made from casting scrap iron and steel and nearly 2400 of these were loaded into carriers and 12 carriers were loaded into Lancaster bombers. When they were dropped they fell weighted end first and as they hit house roofs they smashed their way through and the phosphorus burned so intently it set fire to everything and with one high level bombing raid you could destroy a whole town with wooden buildings and the real effects were seen. When phosphorus burns it draws a lot of air and when you drop 12 racks full per plane and have multiple planes dropping them you literally suck out all the air from a town and people don’t die from the bombing as most die from asphyxiation as there is no oxygen and one subtlety is that some of the phosphorus will burn and use the available oxygen and some will burn extremely slowly, called slumbering; and once air becomes available these also flare up and there could be no oxygen for over 1 hour from a single bombing run. Guerrilla tactics saw the benefits if this as they were easily home made, light enough to throw reasonable distances and if you threw one through a window it caused a horrific fire and removed the oxygen, so a win win for guerrilla tactics and a light and easily concealed weapon as most men could carry 6 of these, unnoticed. Two were hung down trouser legs, two more were put up jacket sleeves and two more put into inside large pockets often called poacher pockets and many men could carry more. Instead of the cast iron ring they salvaged lead from bombed out houses and cast this at home into the desired shape and they were not being dropped from aircraft, but being thrown into factories, workshops, barracks and anywhere else the Germans would occupy as the Germans stripped industry of materials and turned production over to producing items for the Germans, usually the army.
Strategy dictated they needed less weight as the most they would be was glass windows and there had to be enough weight to detonate it and if it didn’t detonate the second or third incendiary would ignite and ignite the others through sympathetic detonation and other buildings would see them hurled over roofs and into compounds and the drop should be enough to detonate them.

Members secretly located premises and industries the Germans may use and more importantly they located their services such as coal storage facilities, electricity supplies and feeds, gas supplies and feeds and any isolating valves and any internal transportation systems and their connections to roads and railways and potentially rivers or canals. By establishing these essential items and services they could plan coordinated attacks and if possible the first incendiary would go in the coal store and ignite their fuel, if this was for trains it would help immobilise the trains and if it was a power station they couldn’t produce the electricity that war businesses need. Knowing where the gas pipes and valves were located meant they could isolate them before blowing the factories supply and if they did the same with the electric cables they could blow them it their switch rooms or transformers.
Attacks were well planned as often one or two men would effectively be on a suicide mission as they would almost certainly be killed if they were secondary incendiary throwers.

Many men would keep a lot of kit in their shelters and they often carried and stored water in their bunkers and they got biscuit rations which were sealed packs or tins and these biscuits were essentially the last resort, then there were the seasonal wild and cultivated foods they grew wild or in their gardens or allotments. Food was scarce and still then managed to eat a little less and preserve what they saved and while much of it was pickled there was lots which was bottled or tinned and things such as flour was stored dry in tins and sealed to preserve it along with sugar and yeast and many had things such as Dutch ovens which were essentially cast iron cooking pots with cast iron lids and you put them in the fire and shovelled embers over the lid.
Men also had cutlery and crockery and while all their plates and cups were metal their crockery was stainless steel so it was robust and would stand the rigours they were put under; their pots and pans were all aluminium so any dents could be knocked out if they were dented and they all had lids which could be used as small frying pans. They had a selection of knives and while many were for gutting and filleting fish; others were hunting knives and they all had a short and long bayonets and the long one fitted on rifles and the short one was for close quarter killing of the enemy.

They all had various ropes of differing types, lengths, and with a variety of fittings and many had grappling hooks which obviously needed rope and many made sling shots for throwing incendiaries or grenades and many used them as climbing ropes or abseiling ropes for repelling. They all had explosives and although it was a limited supply they also knew how to make it and steal the raw materials and the same applied to detonators and they knew how to make explosive devices to main many of the enemy and hey simply filled steel tubes with tacks and nails packed into the explosive and when this was detonated the steel case also acted as more shrapnel and it could main of kill anyone within 50 yards or so. They also did a lot of damage and they would take out windows or destroy thinner or deteriorated wooden structures and injured men are men who cannot fight and consume a lot of resources such as hospital beds and lots of medical equipment and drugs as well as operating theatres and bed space. It wasn’t just about killing an occupying enemy it was also psychological as demoralising an alleged superior force was as important as killing them and they would be more reluctant to fight.

Some has radios to communicate locally and over longer distances and this meant batteries and many were rechargeable and many were the older le clanche batteries which were a heavy glass case with a removable lid and plates attached to them which also could be built, rebuilt, or replaced, and many were. In addition to this they often had a hand cranked charger and this required a lot of effort to crank to get power and often this was all they had and they made do with it for its intended purpose of charging radio batteries. Some got creative and if they were next to a stream or other water source they would make a small water wheel and conceal it well and let this drive their generator for long periods and many often charged more than one battery so they may have other things, albeit limited such as electric light.

What they were was resourceful and they learned how to survive and to generate what they had or needed and they could survive for long periods on very little.

Its also worth remembering that no invading army ever wins unless they have
support / compliance with the populace .guerrilla warfare always wins in the end
provided there are enough to make a stand.
It matters not how mighty the invaders are ,Vietnam with the Americans, Afganistan
with the British (twice) America and Russia all eventually left with their tail between
their legs. Even a small country like Ireland eventually kicked out the mighty British
even though it may have taken over 800 years.

I do wonder though if there are enough in Britain who would be prepared to make a stand
as most of the population seem compliant to everything.

Instead of guns ,crossbows are a very good alternative ,those such as the Adder have a
magazine and carry 6 bolts (later models even more I believe) these can be shot silently
and a magazine can be fired off in about 10 seconds.

There are devices for water ,you can drink directly from a pond or stream through a straw
attached to a filter (about £15 on line)
Personally having lived all my life in the country ,i feel very confident I could survive
and fight even though I have a small disability and getting old with very few problems.

Great article Assassin, reminds me of my grandfather who was not only a soldier in WWII, but a Royal Marine Commando, and one who survived I might add. I still miss him after he eventually passed away. (A stroke, cancer, heart attack etc failed to kill him off. Tough!)

Agreed Dave (the inclination for so many to be compliant now). I just don’t think men are men anymore, apart from a few exceptions. They think going to war is playing Call of Duty on an Xbox (and then playing with themselves) at 30 years of age (older than most soldiers were). A pretty sad state of affairs.