Beach Warriors And The Secret Army

A Memory of New Milton.

Running down from Barton Common is a small river called Becton Bunny. This occupied the local gang of unsupervised children caled the Secret Army for many summer days, building substantial dams, which eventually burst sending a rush of yellow water and mud towards unsuspecting sun worshippers on the beach.

We dug caves into the cliff, and somehow avoided being buried.

One day we found a large bomb-shaped object on the beach, and decided to make it do what bombs are supposed to do. We threw stones at its ‘nosecap’ from the safe distance of at least six feet, without result, and then thought that a little heat would do the trick.

We scoured the beach for firewood and by teatime had built a considerable bonfire over our bomb. But matches had we none, so agreed to meet up after breakfast next day to fulfil our enterprise.

As we got to the top of Becton cliff next morning, Uncle Tom was on the beach loading our bomb and bonfire onto a truck so we never got our big bang. In hindsight, I hope it was only an aircraft fuel tank! but even that might have had interesting repercusions if we only had a match.

We subsequently diverted our attention to the minefield at the top of Becton Bunny. There was a pillbox to defend the bunny from invading ‘sealions’ backed up with a minefield that was surrounded by a rusty barbed wire fence with signs saying ‘Danger, Unexploded Bomb’ etc. The Sappers had lifted the mines at the end of the war, but there was an accounting error. More mines appeared to have been laid than were recovered. It became our mission to find these lost mines and make them do what mines are supposed to do.

None of us were brave enough to venture inside the fence, so our adopted method was to fetch stones and clods of earth, and to heave out missiles over the fence at any likely looking target. This kept us busy for days and provided the excuse for cook outs on the common, and the recovery of lost golf balls for which the Golf Club secretary used to pay us a Galleon Hapeney a time. I suspect that some of those balls were not actually lost until we had found them. Our bush skills and general sneaky-ness was well developed.

The Sappers eventually arrived to clear our minefield, with a bren gun carrier equipped with a chain flail. This was towed by wire across the mined area beating clod, bush and anything underground into a fine tilth; but with as little success as the Secret Army method produced. The OIC was somewhat puzzled that the level of earth inside the fence was notably higher than the surrounding area outside, but somehow I doubt he discovered the reason for this. A dozen kids, with a mission can move mountains!

The barbed wire fence was removed and we had free access to the Pill box on the cliff top which became our Secret Army headquarters complete with primus stove in a biscuit tin, and supplies buried nearby ready for a future invasion, when we would do our bit for our declining King and future Queen.

Somehow, we survived those years before the Coronation, and in the following August, the Secret Army stood down, as we departed for boarding schools, Brockenhurst or for Ashley to become a “2Mod”

---

---