Maldon Underground Resistance Aux Units in Essex
by Tony Smith.

In the mid 1930s, my father, “Jack” Smith, took over the family’s butchers business from his father – the Sausage King of Maldon- at 29 Market Hill.

The war kicked off in 1939 and with the introduction of rationing the business was no longer viable .  He stopped trading and became manager of Bentall’s Works canteen, overseeing the kitchen run by a Scottish cook, Miss Hepburn, “Heppy” and her bevy of girls and organising various social functions, dances, variety shows for the Bentall’s workforce.

Early on in the war he became an ARP Warden and spent many a convivial evening at the ARP Post that was situated in a cellar behind the Ship public house at the bottom of Market Hill.

In 1940 he was approached and invited to set up a unit of “Auxiliaries” who were to provide underground resistance if the Germans invaded.  It was a secret organisation and there were many groups all over the country with the majority in the south-east.  They wore Home Guard uniforms – this was their cover- and the Patrol Leader – my father- was given the rank of sergeant.  He had a wide range of local contacts as had the other members of his group.  Jock Quilter, the local poacher who lived in Cromwell Lane was chosen for his intimate knowledge of the countryside.

There was also Phil Markham, who owned a soft drinks company in Spital road, Bill Broome, a gentleman called Nightingale who I believe lived in Heybridge and I think there were three or four others.

The Intelligence Officer for the unit was a Captain Darwall Smith, a man for whom my father had great respect and the local officer Lieutenant Tuker from Danbury.

For training, my father was told to report to the Post Mistress at the GPO, Highworth , Wiltshire.  From here he was picked up by army lorry and taken to what turned out to be Coleshill House.  Here he was trained in the use of plastic explosives, time pencils, weapons, the techniques of sabotage ,how to kill silently and how to disappear into hiding in an operational base when the time came to go underground.

Built in secret by military engineers, the hideout or “operational base” was hidden under Beeleigh Mill with access via a concealed trapdoor in the floor.  My Mother was shown this towards the end of the war when the risk of invasion had receded.  After the war I was shown where they hid their radio under a hedge in an adjacent field.
The hideout contained the basics  (the basics included a barrel of rum ) for the group to exist for a week – it had been learnt from similar groups operating in occupied France that a week was the usual time that it took for them to be discovered and captured.

The shuttered butchers shop became a munitions store.  The butchers blocks were now piled high with trip wire, booby traps, time pencils, fuse wire, plastic explosive, Colt revolvers, Fairbairn daggers, knuckle dusters, powerful magnets for attaching bombs to tanks, boxes of .22 &.38 ammunition, hand-grenades, and my father’s .22 Winchester snipers rifle with telescopic site and silencer.  In the garage at the bottom of the garden which had once housed his beloved MG Magnette – now sold to an airman in the RAF – were stacked crates of fire bombs.

Luckily, the services of the Auxiliaries were never called upon. At the end of  November 1944, the Auxiliaries were disbanded. The War Office took away my father’s much prized snipers rifle and, much to his disgust, the still full barrel of rum, but despite repeated requests, failed to collect the explosives.  These were eventually dumped at sea by a friendly local fisherman.

(Images and content provided by Tony Smith, November 2006 ©.)