The stories we hear about the war tend to be about quirky successes like Operation Mincemeat, or conspicuous gallantry like Dunkirk. We don’t hear about the bleak little tragedies and the mistakes of war, like the boat smashed by a storm with all hands lost; or the faulty plane that took off but couldn’t land; or the sailors left to drown because of Admiralty standing orders. And we don’t hear about the abandoned projects, like the bouncing bomb that was never used.
These are just four of the stories recorded by the Caithness at War project. The project is a magnificent piece of local history which includes maps, stories, on-site interpretation panels, and a website. My thanks go to Alistair Jack and the other volunteers who are creating this county-wide living memorial.
Caithness was on the front line, facing German-held Norway, Denmark and Holland, where the Atlantic joins the North Sea. The Highlands north of Inverness became a military controlled zone; inbound travellers’ IDs were checked, and adult residents needed permits as well as IDs. Wick was surrounded by gun batteries, with searchlights pointing out to sea, and machine guns overlooking the harbour, while Sinclair Bay was dotted with pillboxes every quarter of a mile or so.
The RAF station at Wick – now Wick Airport – was a grass strip in the 1930s. But during the war, it became a busy air base. Men and aircraft stationed at Wick carried out reconnaissance and anti-submarine patrols; they provided fighter cover for the area; they flew meteorological flights, dropped supplies in bad weather, and conducted air sea rescue missions as far afield as Norway. They attacked German convoys, and bombed strategic sites in German-held Norway, including a ski-resort used by German high command and Norwegian collaborators. They flew up to half a dozen sorties every day, and practiced bomb runs in Sinclair Bay.
Like the death of the Queen’s favourite uncle, the Duke of Kent in an air crash near Dunbeath. Was he flying the aircraft himself, or did the pilot swoop over nearby Berriedale to show him his friend’s house there? Or are any of the numerous conspiracy theories correct?
Or the air crew who crash-landed perfectly on the remote island of North Rona, trying out new, secret surveillance equipment – and finding the tragic remains of a twenty-year old sailor stranded there.
Or the disastrous operation Freshman, where thirty Royal Engineers were dropped into Norway in the depths of winter on a sabotage mission. The the pilots could not find the landing site, and three of the four aircraft crashed. Only seven men survived the aborted mission. Thirty-nine men were killed, 18 when their aircraft crashed, and 21 of them murdered or executed by the Germans.
My mother worked at Bletchley Park during the war. She told me about the unmanned doodle-bugs, the V1s and V2s, falling on London in 1944 and ’45. “During the blitz, the siren told you the bombs were coming, and you had time to take shelter. With the doodle-bugs, you heard them come over and hoped the noise wouldn’t stop near you. They were safe while you could hear them; when the noise stopped, the bombs dropped.”
I would love to tell her about Dougie Duncan, who was deployed here at Noss Head, and who spotted the repeated use of V, V, V, V in the enigma signals he relayed to Bletchley. As a result, the British destroyed the Germans’ test site in France, delaying the first doodle-bug deployments on London.
My contributions to the Highlands and Islands Tapestry include a lad in one of the listening posts, listening to the Kriegsmarine. The sea spells out listening to messages from German ships in morse code. In fact, Noss was manned by the RAF and listened to the Luftwaffe. The World War Two buildings at Dunnet Head were for a radar station overlooking the Pentland Firth.
The importance of those air raid warnings was brought home by Britain’s first daylight bombing raid which happened without warning in Wick, in June 1940, two months before the start of the London Blitz. A German bomber, aiming for Wick harbour, dropped its load tragically early. It killed fifteen people, including eight children playing in the street. Jenny Alderson was one of the children who was injured but survived.
This story is… about my little brother John and my friends, all of who were killed in the raid. Four days before the air raid I had my seventh birthday. My little brother John[‘s]… fifth birthday only three weeks away… We had gone out to play with a group of friends… My mother would have told me to look after John, me being the older child… We were playing… all afternoon. My mother came to tell us it was teatime but, as children do, we dallied a while. Thank God my mother didn’t wait for us.
I remember nothing of the explosion. All I recall is trying to wake up, the smell of the explosion, and choking on the dust. I picked myself up and stumbled down Bank Row… I was taken to the hospital and remembered the terrible moaning around me.
Jenny’s injuries were so bad, she spent a fortnight in hospital.
The memorial garden in Bank Row, today.
Another survivor, Alister Wares said:
It was a good long while before Jenny came round the corner at Williamson Street… and she was pretty badly injured. Everything was full of stoor and muck and then Barbara Farquhar appeared with this lovely white towel which she must have taken out of a drawer. I always remember the whiteness, with all the stoor and muck, as she put it round Jenny’s face….
John, he never appeared.
The deaths of the adults devastated families too.
Four short months later, German bombers aiming for Wick Airfield dropped bombs on the town and strafed the streets, damaging 140 houses. Two children and one young adult were killed.
Children were affected in other ways too, like the boy who found the bodies of six sailors on the beach.
The beaches at Ackergill, Reiss, Keiss and round the headland to Freswick are gems of the North Highlands, and fabulous for people, horses, children, and dogs. But they are littered with blocks of concrete – the remains of the defences during the war.
The long gently sloping curve of Sinclair Bay made it a perfect place for the Germans to invade. You can still see the pyramid-shaped “dragons teeth” and cube-shaped blocks which defended against landing crafts and tanks. Thankfully, the sand has been cleared of the mines, which meant that local people were denied access to the beaches.
There are houses now on the site of the Prisoner of War camp between Wick and Thurso. It was only operational after the war, from 1945 to 1948 – a clue to the nature of the prisoners who were held there. It held some ordinary PoWs, who were allowed to work for nearby farmers, but an inner compound held some senior members of the Third Reich, including a former concentration camp commanders, and senior members of the SS, in what the occupants darkly called “Little Belsen”.
Some memories of the war are so small, as to be almost invisible, like the iron eyelets let into walls, so chains could be hung as barriers.
Some are large, but hidden in plain sight, like the hangers still in use at Wick Airport.
Some are deeply moving, like the memorial garden in Bank Row, created by the siblings of the children who died.
The sight of the silhouettes of soldiers, overlooking the harbour, sends shivers up my spine. And I was happy to crochet poppies for our local memorial.
But ultimately, it is not about displays. It is about loss. In the words of Harry Smith:
The 1st time I went to Remembrance Sunday was 1928
I don’t remember whether people wore #poppies
but they wore their grief like jagged glass.
My name is Ben, and my life has been blessed because I have not lost anyone I knew to war. However, in many ways, the war shaped my childhood. My father was a prisoner of war in the Far East, my uncle died there and, understandably, my mother and grandparents never stopped mourning his loss.
This post is published as part of my website for anyone interested in staying in The Lighthouse Keeper’s Cottage, Noss Head.
Being human matters. This post was written by me, and not by AI.
