Roy Coleman

Roy Coleman was a collier and a messenger boy for the ARP before he was recruited into the Auxiliary Units from the Home Guard. He was the brother of Auxilier Edwin Coleman.

A few weeks later his old Scout Master, Sergeant Wally Thomas, approached him. "We've got a special gang," Wally told Roy, "a special gang with special jobs to do. I've got your friend David Maybury with me. He's my Corporal [not recorded]. Do you want to come and join us ?"

So for the rest of the war Roy kept up his work in the mines, his Home Guard service and his Auxiliary duties. "It was nothing to come home late, get changed and go back out to work. We had two Home Guard uniforms, one with the local badge and another with the Auxiliary Units badge."

Throughout the war, and for over fifty years after, Roy kept his involvement with the Auxiliary Units totally secret. "During the war I got married and moved out of my parent’s house. A week later my mother found a wooden box under my bed. She got my younger brother to take it to Wally Thomas, my old Scout Master, as she thought he’d know what to do with it. She never knew what that box contained - a Thompson sub-machine gun and 3,000 rounds of ammunition."