Samuel Gilling

Sam Gilling was to be contacted via Ken Watts C/o Sunny View, Shipham. He was an agricultural labourer and the first in the area to use a combine harvester. An early volunteer in the Home Guard he was an old friend of Ken Watts. Sam ribbed Ken about never doing Home Guard parades so Ken said “Come and find out, we could do with a bloke like you”. Sam said “I think I was replacing somebody. I was 18 when the war started. When I signed up with Sandford Auxiliary Unit, I had to go to their head office in Exeter to sign secrecy papers. It was probably late 1941.”

In a 1997 interview he explained further.

"I was in the Shipham Home Guard and I used to wonder why my mate wandered off three times a week, but he was actually helping to prepare a natural cave in Sandford Woods as a bunker. Bushes were grown over the top which we lifted up to get in, and there was an escape hatch at the back. We were armed with revolvers. daggers, cheese cutters - which are used to strangle people noiselessly from behind - sub-machine guns - Sten guns and explosives. We were trained in silent approach work, to disrupt the enemy lines. And we signed a secret agreement not to say a word to anyone. My stepmother and father knew nothing, they thought I was in the Home Guard. After the war, I didn't tell my wife. I just forgot about it more or less."

Sam Gilling along with Fred Trego and many Auxiliers from around the country were sent to the Isle of Wight in the summer 1944 to defend it prior to and during D-Day.

“I was working for the War Agriculture Committee and I just had to tell them I was called up. Nothing was said about where we were going or what we were doing. Of cause we thought we were off to France. We got picked up and taken to Bishops Lydeard [HQ] and fitted out overnight. We left the next morning about half past seven and it wasn't until we got to Southampton that we knew where we were off to. We got on this boat and were taken over to the Isle of Wight into Parkhurst Prison. There were ack-ack sites on the Isle of Wight and we were stationed on one of them.
They thought the Germans might send para-troops over. The invasion communications went through the Isle of Wight, and there was PLUTO the big oil line. That's what we were guarding. We were all Auxiliers, no Home Guard. We were on duty all night and used to go back to the camp and have breakfast, a good clean up and a couple of hours sleep. We had to recce likely German landing points. Then we selected the best defensive positions to stop them. That was all until a fortnight after D-Day. Then we went home again. It was all very secret".

Sam was twice called up and sent home from joining the Army due to his Auxiliary Unit role.

In Jan 1997 he attended a reunion of Mendip Auxiliers at the Charterhouse Centre where others received their Defence Medals from the Lord Lieutenant, Sir John Mills.