World War II's best-kept secret

My Facebook post featuring Reg G Paine of Burford in March of this year prompted the identification by follower Bill Williams of a secret wartime cell in Burford. It was called ‘Section VII’, or S7, and experts have speculated that such cells were one of the best-kept secrets of the war. Here’s what Bill found…

In response to the threat of Nazi invasion in 1940, MI6 recruited a small group of local men. Burford-born Reg Paine, whose father was the focus of Julie’s post, was reminded of a discussion he had had in the 1980s about four local men who had been recruited by the intelligence services at the beginning of World War II. They were:

S7 recruited civilians from among those who could remain in their jobs during an invasion. In the event that the country was defeated and occupied, these residents would carry out acts of sabotage against the enemy forces. Some were even trained to carry out the assassination of key German personnel or British collaborators. Members would have collected information on the German forces and sent them back via wireless sets – possibly to the government in exile in Canada. The Burford men were:

Local GP Dr Cyril Cheatle, a World War I veteran, based at the cottage hospital. He was actively engaged in the life of the town and he possessed the necessary medical knowledge needed for a group of this type.

Reg G Paine, who ran a garage on Burford High Street. He had been offered a commission in the Royal Engineers, but his role maintaining the vehicles of the local RAF and the fire brigade was considered too valuable, so he was given ‘reserved occupation’ status instead.

Dick Hartley, who farmed at Manor Farm, Upper Milton under Wychwood. A former county hockey and cricket player who, at 57, was still captaining the 1^st XI at Shipton cricket club, he was renowned for his leadership skills. He also had a connection with John Cecil Masterman, chairman of ‘The Twenty Committee’, a British intelligence organisation responsible for managing and exploiting double agents.

Captain ‘Jack’ Mitford, a serving officer in the Life Guards, brother of Lord Redesdale and uncle of the infamous Mitford sisters. He had impressive family connections (including Churchill) and a history of serving in the army. He lived at Westwell and had a good knowledge of the local area.

Reg Paine junior, who lived in Priory Lane in Burford as a child, recalled that he and his friends had discovered a bunker in the grounds of Burford Priory in the 1950s. It had, he says: ‘Four bunks, two-on-two on the south wall.’ The current owner, entrepreneur Matthew Freud, confirms that the bunker was probably filled in during the 1970s, and he revealed that it was encased in steel, suggesting that it was designed to withstand blasts.

Only once the Auxiliary Units had been defeated and the country occupied would S7 have become active; this long-term resistance role is why they were present across the entire country rather than just in coastal areas.

Andrew Chatterton of the Coleshill Auxilliary Research Team (CART) believes that: ‘Because of the secrecy around S7, little is known about how they were recruited, but they tended to be those who could remain in their jobs – often in a workplace where it was not unusual to see people going out and about during a working day.’

Training at weekends and in the evenings would have been on-going from recruitment through to stand-down, and members would have trained in and around their jobs and any other war roles they had, although members of the Home Guard were generally exempt.

The difference between S7 and the other Auxiliary Units like ‘Churchill’s Secret Army’ was that most of the cells were located in towns and villages, rather than isolated spots near to the coast. The Auxiliary Units were stood down in November 1944, so it seems likely that S7 was too. However, due to the level of secrecy surrounding the group, Chatterton suggests that it could have continued after the war:

‘The groups had been whispered about for years after the war and since records were released in the early 2000s, there has been an increasing knowledge and understanding of their role. The Special Duties Branch remains a relatively unknown aspect of Britain’s defences and S7 has only become really apparent in the last ten years. Essentially we know very little about them.’

The existence of S7 was revealed in only a single paragraph of the official history of The Special Intelligence Services (2010) by Keith Jefferey. Malcolm Atkin, author of Fighting Nazi Occupation 1939-1945 (2015), recognises the role S7 played. He reacted to the discovery of the ‘Burford Cell’ saying:

‘Many of the operatives like Dick Hartley were middle-aged men who had legitimate reasons for not being conscripted and whose occupation gave him a good reason to travel around the countryside. Personal contacts were also important with membership of the intelligence services often being family affairs, so the Masterman connection might be significant.’

Ultimately, of course, the invasion never happened, but Atkin is in no doubt as to how important these men were: ‘This would have been Britain’s true resistance organisation and it was effective because it escaped the attention of Nazi spies during World War II. Is it one of the best-kept secrets of the war?’