Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2008 | Page 57

THE ISLAND AT WAR 1939 - 1945

and be able to live off the land.
They were trained in
guerrilla fighting, sabotage and
spying behind the enemy lines
and each unit had concealed
underground bases equipped
with a selection of weapons,
plastic explosive, incendiary
devices and enough food to last
for two weeks as they were not
expected to survive for long if
the Island was invaded. The
booklet Issued to all Auxunit
volunteers looked like an
agricultural catalogue but was
a ‘disguised’ handbook on
explosives and sabotage targets.
Apparently some of the local
Brighstone lads used to follow
the men from an Auxilliary
Unit up Gagger Hill Lane and
watch them disappear into
a secret hide-out. Before
D-Day, additional Auxunits
were brought from the north of
England to the Isle of Wight
in case the Germans mounted
a counter invasion against the

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ports on the south coast. No
written records of the men’s
services were kept and most
of the operational bases were
destroyed at the end of the war.
On 1 November 1944 the
senior military officer in the
Island, Colonel R.E. Pickering,
took the General Salute at
a Standing Down Parade
attended by 1,550 men of all
ranks at Victoria Recreation
ground in Newport. vsThe
men marched off to the music
of the combined bands of the
Sandown Company and H.M.S.
Warspite. After the Company
stood down, the band’s
instruments were presented to
the local Army Cadets Corps.
The men who had joined
the Home Guard in 1940 with
only LDV armbands and no
weapons had become the most
efficient citizen army in the
history of Britain.

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