Back in the 1940s, winning the second World War was by no means assured for Great Britain and the allied forces.
The threat of invasion by the Germans hung over the country – the Nazis had already made their way into Norway, Denmark, France and the Low Countries, and it was feared England would be next.
The country was already being bombed from above by German fighter pilots.
In preparation, over 600 secret bunkers were set up in the midst of the countryside, with units of armed men tasked with staying behind and fighting the enemy in case of invasion.
“The regular defences require supplementing with guerrilla type troops, who will allow themselves to be overrun and who thereafter will be responsible for hitting the enemy in the comparatively soft spots behind zones of concentrated attack,” announced the War Cabinet in July 1940.
These special units were trained to use guerrilla tactics, such as going behind the Germans as they advanced and carrying out pin prick attacks.
The underground bunkers were built by the British Army as bases for the stay-behind units.
As many as 1,000 may have been dug, but the locations of many of these have been lost
A large number of the bunkers have fallen into disrepair and have collapsed in on themselves – to the casual observer, they would just look like holes in the ground.
You have to know where to look for them in order to find them.
But recently these secret bunkers have piqued the interest of historians, war veterans and enthusiasts alike – and more and more people are attempting to discover their locations.
“The units were set up 10 miles from vulnerable coasts, in South Wales, South England, East Anglia and beyond,” John Warwicker, author of Churchill’s Underground Army: A History of the Auxiliary Units in World War II, told the Daily Mail.
“There were about 30 to 35 units in each county with six men per unit.”
Mr Warwicker told the Mail that one was in the basement of a burnt-out manor house, one was in a badger’s set and another was located in an old root cellar.
The units, and therefore the bunkers, were never needed in the end. Germany invaded Russia in 1941, and it seemed like Britain was no longer a prime target for Nazi invasion.
The underground bunkers were supposed to be destroyed after the war, but many remained to rot instead.
And their locations remain a secret to this day – the details have never been released.
However, British Resistance Archive researchers continue to search for the hidden bunkers and discover their secrets.
