Vee: Lost and Found Read online

For Adrian, like millions of others the world over, the war developed into a routine. Depending on when he was rostered for duty, he would walk to the road-end where he would either hop aboard the lorry sent for Gairloch pick-ups, or flag down a vehicle on its way to the base. There was no shortage of them, especially during the hours of daylight.

  Sometimes, if his shift coincided with the start of school or a surgery opening, he would breakfast with Mhairi and Jamie, or with Dr John- or sometimes with all three. More often, he would sort that out for himself. The bicycle was almost never used for military business of the ‘official’ sort, but he had been issued with it and so he kept it. What could be simpler than that, administratively speaking? It got a lot of use in the periods when he was off-shift, when he and Jamie would go along the coast to look at the caves near North Erradale or up past Melvaig. It was a beautiful country, and easy to forget there was a war on even when the transports and their escorts plodded round the point heading for Loch Ewe.

  A few times during the Summer of 1942 he and Jamie camped on the peninsula, using an old tent of Dr John’s. Once he even accompanied them, borrowing a rickety bicycle from a neighbour. Adrian remembered being impressed by his level of fitness as he raced ahead. For a man in his forties he was in good shape, which was a lot more than could be said for his own father or his father’s friends, who spent their working days in the factories and their evenings in the pubs. This was probably the moment when it crystallised for him: he would be staying in a place like this, amongst people like this, when it was all over.

  In the meantime it was really just a case of Keep Going. True, there were unpleasant days: the frenetic run-up to when the convoy sailed, when the supply boats were criss-crossing the bay, transferring provisions as the ships stocked up. There were the nervous faces of the sailors as they prepared for the journey to Murmansk or Archangel; the never-saying-goodbye looks they shared. Some of those on board the merchant vessels were even younger than he was and they were sailing into the ice floes with old, experienced hands; but all were equally vulnerable.

  Their fate might rest on where they were in the convoy if a U-boat picked them up, or how experienced the crew of a Heinkel was, or how deep their draught was if a torpedo missed another ship and headed for them. A straightforward mechanical failure could leave them isolated and undefended- easy pickings for anything bearing a Swastika.

  These were the thoughts he knew they would have, but Adrian knew there would be other fears too, fears he was protected from by the simplicity of his role on the base and a comfortable life outside it. Sometimes he would lie awake at night thinking of the faces of these men, the lucky ones, the unlucky ones, and he would feel himself going through what they were going through. When strong winds shook the house he would feel the shudder of the engines far below, or picture the spray hitting the bridge. It was guilt- he knew that but he knew also that he was helping, though it didn’t seem enough.

  Had he known what was coming, Adrian would have felt a little less guilty, and a lot less lucky.

  30 Knights Errant

  Lairg 2014

  Yes indeed, they were still getting it wrong.

  After a second pint in the restaurant, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza left the protections of the world behind and ventured out. The wind was blowing over the waters of the loch and up the street. An empty crisp bag scurried uphill, seeking a doorway.

  “There’s rain in the air,” muttered Alastair. “We must hurry.”

  Experienced walkers both, they knew the dangers of being caught in the open on such a night, at twenty-past seven. Which is why, fifteen yards further on, they entered a pub. Any pub would have done.

  Inside, the local men looked up.

  “Come far?” asked the barman.

  “From Laxford Bridge. A walking holiday,” said Tom.

  All around them, the locals nodded in silent appreciation. A long way: Reay forest; the Glen of the Eagles; along the lochsides.

  “The drinks are on the house.”

  That is what Tom half expected. The reality was different.

  “Six pound seventy-five.”

  They took the drinks over to a table near the window, where they could appreciate the rain without having to experience it. Neither wondered where the five could have come from.

  “Tomorrow’s journey,” Tom asked, “will it be anything like today’s in terms of scenery, places, that sort of thing?”

  “Well it’s longer, by about thirty miles or so, but the landscape is completely different because we’re going right up through the middle of the country rather than along the coast. It’s rather bleak, to be honest: there’s virtually nothing in terms of mountains and not much in the way of lakes either. It really is quite desolate- lots of browns and greens, and rounded hills.”

  “What about forests, the old Caledonian Pine forest. Any stretches of that?”

  “No, but there’s something worth seeing on the Strathnaver road: a small monument with a plaque on it opposite what was the village of Rosail. The clearances were particularly brutal there. About ten thousand people were cleared from the glen and the village itself was obliterated by the Duke of Sutherland. The monument is a sort of memorial to one of the villagers- a man called Donald Macleod. He was forced out and resettled in Canada, where he died many years later. He wrote a book called ‘Gloomy Memories’ describing what happened. It’s a horrible read.

  “The title describes it perfectly. It would have been suppressed if he’d tried to write it in Scotland. The landowners wanted to bury the evidence of what they’d done. Just like so many of the Highlanders themselves, here and in battlefields all over the globe. If you want to borrow it, I’ll look it out for you. Just don’t expect any jokes. Apart from the Justice system. That was a joke.”

  A strong gust brought the rain on to the window and they looked out. Hopefully, tomorrow would be reasonable but it didn’t really matter much. When you are in a car, nothing out there matters very much. It’s not like you’re actually walking or anything.

  _________________________

  It was a quarter to eight when Alastair woke the following morning, the Friday. Tom was down on one knee, tying his shoelaces.

  “OK Sleeping Beauty…I’ve had my shower and it looks nice outside. I’m popping out to see what Lairg looks like in the daytime and without rain.”

  “Thank God for that. When I opened my eyes and saw you there I thought you were about to propose. What a nightmare!”

  “We’ll go for breakfast in half an hour. That gives you time to get ready. I’ll only be a few minutes. I’ll take the key.”

  It was bright outside, especially after the staid décor of the B and B. There was no traffic and hardly anyone else about. Up ahead Tom saw a man coming out of a shop with a bag of breakfast rolls and a newspaper, so that’s where he headed. After a quick look at the options he selected the Ullapool Advertiser. Three whole pages of properties; that was about right.

  The headline made him smile ‘Council U-turn on public toilets’. Predictably, it was about ‘blockages in the planning system’ with lots of words like ‘inconvenience’ crowbarred into the prose. It had that endearing awfulness he so enjoyed in Scotland’s local papers; that Sunday Post feel that made him think of his granny in Larkhall. Mind you, she took it seriously. Now that was funny.

  Paper tucked under his arm and with his hands in his pockets, he sauntered a bit further along the main street and looked out over the loch. Five past eight- he’d better be heading back. Up ahead he could see a woman out with a fat- looking black Lab on a lead. It looked as if it had trouble walking. He saw her reach down, a poly bag over her hand, so he looked away.

  It was beyond him why anyone would want a dog like that. Sometimes a thin layer of polythene isn’t quite enough: you can still feel your hand touching the thing, even though you know it isn’t. There’s a disgusting warmth about dog ownership. He could never love an animal that much, he told himself, picking up the pace.
/>   Half a mile away, Alastair closed the book, marking the page with the pencil. He lay stretched out on the bed for a moment or two. On the journey down from Laxford Bridge he had found almost nothing worthy of note. In fact, the whole holiday had been disappointing from that viewpoint. Perhaps today would be different, especially if they took the Strathnaver road, not the Loch Loyall one. He looked at his watch. Tom would be back soon so he put the book in his bag and went for a shower.

  He was still there when Tom returned.

  “Ten past!” Tom shouted through. With breakfast being served till half past there was no danger they’d miss it, but he’d give Alastair the reminder anyway. He flopped on the bed and looked over the property section. Gairloch, Gruinard, Ullapool, possibly a little further north- that’s what he was looking for. Aha!

  Spacious two bedroomed house built in traditional style. Unfurnished but fully carpeted. Multifuel stove and off-peak heating. On outskirts of Gairloch. Guide price £180,000.

  Tom remembered constructing descriptions just like this years before when he joined the Hamilton firm. It would be a recent build, probably not too dear to heat, but ‘outskirts’ was meaningless. The price was higher than he could cope with and the house was bigger than he needed.

  Stone built cottage- one double bedroom and sitting room. Small study/ single bedroom. Kitchen & utility room. Stone garage/wkshop. Parking. Solid fuel heating. £120,000 ono.

  Promising. The real thing, if a bit basic. Probably open fires, no damp course. Interesting though.

  Alastair came through with his trousers on, drying his hair with a towel. “What’s it like out?”

  “Looks fine- quite bright, with a fresh breeze. Should be a nice day.”

  “Bought anything yet? You know, somewhere we can be happy together, have children and hand rear them? Good school in the area, that kind of thing? I would have said ‘yes’ by the way.”

  Tom went back to the newspaper. It would give him time to think.

  “Nothing yet,” he said.

  A couple of minutes passed.

  “How about this?” he asked. “It might be worth considering.”

  “”Go for it,” said Alastair, thinking the conversation had actually dried up. He was pulling on a jumper. It was twenty past eight. “But make it quick.”

  Tom folded the paper over so he could hold it easily in one hand whilst pointing with the other, as if he actually were reading.

  For sale: converted lighthouse. Traditional “organic” design. Central heating (i.e. a coal fire on ground floor)). Good sea views. All glazing intact. Rough exterior…

  He grimaced. Alastair grimaced. They made eye contact and grimaced together.

  “Price?” Alastair asked.

  “It says ‘open to offers’….”

  “I’ll bet they are.”

  They made their way downstairs to a small dining room. It was the traditional cooked breakfast on offer- perfect. It would take them all the way to Ullapool, if need be.

  31 Night Intruders

  In the early years of the Second World War, the Luftwaffe used a sophisticated target-finding system known as ‘Knickebein’. From bases in Germany, and later in France, huge radio transmitters on turntables were able to project invisible beams over targets in Britain. Aircraft like the Heinkel 111, Dornier 17 and Junkers 88 would ride these beams until they reached their targets. As early as 1940, it was possible for aircraft like these even to have their bomb release point determined by the intersecting beams of a system called ‘X-Gerat’. In effect, this meant that German bombers could carry out their missions successfully even on the darkest of nights.

  At this time there was no effective British nightfighter force because there was no airborne radar and the pilots, like ‘Cat’s Eyes Cunningham’, had to rely on what they called the Mark One Eyeball. The statistics bear this out. In the period from June to December 1940, the Luftwaffe flew over 29,000 night bombing sorties and yet they lost only thirty-five planes to defending nightfighters.[2]

  Fortunately for Britain, this technological advantage was countered when British scientists found a way to bend these beams or jam them. From then on it was a game of cat and mouse, of measure and counter-measure, as one side gained advantage, then the other.

  The choice of Loch Ewe as a base for Arctic convoys makes perfect sense when you look at a map of the country. West coast bases were further away from Luftwaffe airfields, whether they were in Germany, in France or in Norway. They could only be reached either by flying round the coast, which was beyond the range of almost all Luftwaffe planes, or by flying overland, which made them more likely to be detected. Loch Ewe would therefore have been a better place than, say, Loch Eriboll on the north coast, because it was a safer place for the ships to gather in.

  The shape of Loch Ewe itself is also advantageous. Some other west coast lochs are long and narrow, such as Loch Broom, on which Ullapool sits, or Little Loch Broom a few miles to the south. Others such as Gair Loch, or Torridon are large enough but the sea entrances are wide and harder to seal off. Loch Ewe, however, is large enough for the convoys and the sea entrance is narrow. It was, if you like, the right size, the right shape and in the right place.

  By late 1942 the European war was at its most intense. France, of course, was still under German occupation with a compliant French Government in Vichy. There was still heavy fighting in North Africa- the turning point there, El Alamein, did not take place until November of that year, leading to the surrender of Axis forces there in May of the following year.

  It would be in the Soviet Union that the decisive battles would be fought. Leningrad (formerly St Petersburg) the most European of Russia’s cities and the birthplace of the Revolution, had been under siege since September 1941. It was to last until January 1943. Moscow had withstood German attack and was saved after a last- ditch defence in January 1942.

  It was in Stalingrad (formerly Volgograd) that the most brutal phase of the conflict would be centred. The seven month battle from August 1942 to February1943 has been described as the most brutal in human history. The city was reduced to rubble and men and women fought hand to hand in cellars, in bombed-out factories and apartment blocks and in suicidal attacks on ever-shifting enemy positions. The Germans alone lost 120,000 dead, 3500 tanks, 3000 aircraft and 75,000 vehicles. Of the 90,000 German prisoners taken at the end of the struggle, only 5000 would see Germany again after the war was over. The Russian losses were even higher.

  This is the context in which the Arctic Convoys need to be seen. They made it possible for Russia to stay in the war. The seventy-eight convoys carried thousands of aircraft, thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of the trucks that were absolutely essential to the Red Army. The convoys delivered 1500 locomotives and over half a million tons of rail. They carried tinned food, fuel, tyres, munitions: almost everything needed by an Army operating in the field. Every ten days or so, a convoy would arrive in Archangel or Murmansk, sometimes after heavy attack. Some individual convoys carried enough to equip an army of forty or fifty thousand men and nineteen of the seventy-eight convoys sailed from Loch Ewe.

  Once deployed on Russian soil, these tanks, trucks and guns might take months for the Wehrmacht to destroy, and at huge cost to themselves. How much better it was, then, to attack them in transit, especially when they were gathered together in harbour. The port of Liverpool- another base for Arctic Convoys- was bombed repeatedly, though the mission took Luftwaffe aircraft over the Midlands, where the anti-aircraft defences were strong. In Loch Ewe, the overland flight route passed over areas of little strategic importance north of Inverness, where defences were light.

  There was also one way in which the landscape of that part of the north-west was genuinely helpful to Luftwaffe aircrew. With electronic aids to navigation proving susceptible to countermeasures, crews preferred to place their trust in what they could actually observe for themselves; and nothing stands out more clearly, even on a dark night, than a calm stretch of o
pen water. The twelve mile straight of Loch Maree was like a huge finger pointing directly at Poolewe and Loch Ewe. Its distinctive shape and length made it easy to pick out and aircraft could then follow its line straight to the target.

  The first of Adrian’s two bad experiences took place in early November 1942. During the night his sleep was disturbed by the irregular drone of aircraft engines- a well known ‘signature’ of German planes. From a small window at the back of the house (and with the lights off) he could see the beams of searchlights over the top of the mountain. In the still, night air, even at a distance of ten miles, he could hear sounds of gunfire and the ‘crump’ of explosions.

  Dr John had risen too.

  “There’s no point in worrying now,” he said to Adrian. “Try to get some sleep. You’ll be there in the morning.”

  A moment or two later he came back with a glass of whisky for each of them. “Take this, it should help.”

  At seven-thirty next morning, shortly before Adrian was about to leave, Dr John received a phone call. The base had been attacked by a flight of Luftwaffe aircraft and there were casualties. Would he be able to help at the base? Of course he would.

  Together, John and Adrian moved their things out to the car and, just as they were about to drive off, Mhairi came out with a couple of slices of toast.

  “You don’t know when you’ll be eating again,” she said.

  They nodded and then Dr John, the toast held in his teeth whilst he operated the gearchange, accelerated to the road end and then disappeared up the hill.

  They said very little in the car, and that wasn’t simply the fault of the toast. By the time they reached the top of the hill only three miles or so away, the smoke was visible. In a situation like that, it was hard not to imagine the worst and if they had known exactly what had happened, it wouldn’t have been all that different. Four Junkers 88 bombers on a ‘night intruder’ mission had flown up Loch Maree at low level and attacked some merchant vessels at rest in Loch Ewe. They had carried a mixture of high explosive and incendiary bombs. Of the latter, most had been dropped on shore installations, including the hospital and the administration blocks. As would be expected, wooden buildings had fared the worst.