British Reconnaissance Units
of World War II

Part 2: GHQ Liaison Regiment,
or "Phantom"

by Michael Taylor

It is highly unlikely that the average wargamer will find any use for this unit but it is included here as a very particular kind of recce unit for the sake of completing the overall picture. Put very simply, the job of the various independent squadrons and regiments of this formation was to provide information direct to Force, Army, or Army Group commanders, not on the enemy but on our own units, and to do so by the most direct means possible and ignoring the "usual channels".

Initially it worked entirely on a basis of highly mobile officer patrols contacting the most forward troops to form an assessment of the local situation then radioing this back to their own HQ. Here the information from all patrols was collated and an overall picture kept constantly updated for the senior commander.

As these officer patrols frequently had to attend, if not actually gate crash, briefings by quite senior officers the men concerned had to be highly personable and a list of Phantom officers reads like a post war Who's Who. Perhaps the most famous individual was David Niven, who commanded A Squadron until 1943.

In North Africa 8th. Army invented something called the "J" Service which did a very similar job but by listening in to our own radio traffic rather than by sending out officer patrols. The two schemes were of course complementary and in due course the J Service was incorporated into Phantom.

By the end of the war there were a number of independent squadrons and two full regiments, with a third forming for service in the Far East. The basic shape of the regiments was a Regimental HQ, an Army Group Squadron and two Army Squadrons.

Squadron headquarters and the Squadron J Troops would be colocated with, say, 21st Army Group and I st Canadian and 2nd British Army, while each squadron fielded a number of patrols, typically of an officer and half a dozen men in a jeep and a 15cwt. truck, although corps patrols were enlarged to about 17 all ranks in October 1944.

These patrols would attend orders groups at various command levels and generally reconnoitre the operational area, sending in reports direct to the location of the Army or Army Group commander.

As the officer patrols involve so few vehicles and men they are "invisible" in wargames terms and as it is highly unlikely that any wargamer will wish to model an Army or Army Group HQ (which would probably be too big to fit on the average wargames table anyway!) where the Phantom Squadron and Regimental HQ's were located, I have offered no CD breakdown for them.

British Reconnaissance Units of World War II Part 2: Armoured Divisional Formations

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