A Time of Tyrants

by Trevor Royle

  Re-supplied and suitably refreshed, 89 Brigade took the initiative and reopened the battle for the Admin Box in the first week of February. It quickly proved to be an intensive period of combat, often at close quarters and with quarter neither given nor expected. At one stage the Japanese broke into the medical dressing station and massacred those being treated. The nights were made hideous by howls and shrieks from the attacking Japanese, but despite the determination of their assaults the enemy attack was soon running behind timetable. The Admin Box remained secure, Ngakyedauk Pass was reopened with 2nd KOSB in the vanguard, and after a grim eighteen days of heavy fighting the British and Indian positions in the Arakan had been secured.

  For the Borderers there was one more action on the Maungdaw–Buthidaung road where a massive artillery barrage preceded their attack on Japanese positions at Tatmin Chaung. In one chilling incident on the Horseshoe position, the Japanese were seen to be pegging out a body in the hot sun as a lure. Although 2nd KOSB suspected that the unfortunate victim was a Borderer, the position could not be attacked until nightfall, by which time the body had disappeared. During the mopping up operations a position was found with 126 dead Japanese soldiers, all of whom had been ordered to commit suicide after losing the battle.

  On 26 February the Japanese called off their attacks in the Arakan; for the first time in the war British and Indian troops had managed to stave off a major Japanese offensive, and the commander of the Fourteenth Army, General Sir William Slim, was suitably effusive in his appreciation of the British and Indian battalions which had brought the fighting in the Admin Box to a victorious conclusion: ‘British and Indian soldiers had proved themselves, man for man, the masters of the best the Japanese could bring against them.’

  7 The Arsenal of War

  Whichever way the topography of Scotland is examined, it makes ideal territory for the training of service personnel. Firstly, much of the terrain is rugged high land which offers challenging conditions for adventurous training, while the low land is open and reasonably flat with good internal communications. Secondly, the surrounding waters provide a variety of sea conditions, and thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, most of the land and coastal waters, especially those on the western side of the country, are beyond the prying eyes of a European enemy. From the military point of view, therefore, Scotland has always provided defence planners with a number of possibilities and opportunities. The land mass sprawls over a large area – just over 7.7 million hectares. One-third of the UK, it consists largely of high land and rough grazing; less than two million hectares is made up of pasture or arable land. Some idea of the size of the area can be gauged by super-imposing Scotland upon England: Scotland then stretches from Aldershot in the south to the Borders in the north, and from Liverpool in the west to Scarborough in the east, even before the western and northern isles have been taken into account.

  But there is one problem with the lie of the land: physical barriers like the Mounth (the mountain massif which includes the Cairngorms) and the Southern Uplands make north–south and east–west communications difficult. Historically, the high lands provided a refuge in time of danger and helped, therefore, to preserve Scotland’s independence. Invaders from the south were forced to use the eastern coastal route to bypass the Cheviots or the difficult upland terrain in the west through Annandale. Other problems are posed by the length of the coastline which is the longest in the UK – over 0.4 million hectares of foreshore – and much of this consists of long sea lochs and broad open firths. Most of the high ground is sparsely populated or uninhabited, and the weather conditions are often harsh and unpredictable. Rivers and inland lochs also provide barriers, and the pattern of north–south roads was determined by the presence of glens and mountain passes, some of which, like the Pass of Drumochter on the main route between Perth and Inverness, rise up over 450 metres. In short, from a military standpoint Scotland offers most advantages to its defenders and provides a serious test to those intent on invasion. By its very nature, it is a terrain which was made for demanding military and naval training.

  To utilise that topography during the Second World War, Scotland was home to the necessary service structures which made the country a vital cog in the homeland defences of the UK. The Royal Navy had two naval commands which covered Scotland: Rosyth Command, formerly Coast of Scotland Command, and Western Approaches Command. Although the Flag Officer of the latter command (Rear-Admiral J. S. M. Ritchie) had his headquarters in Liverpool, there were important Scottish presences at Glasgow where the Flag Officer Vice-Admiral James Troup had his headquarters at St Enoch’s Hotel (HMS Spartiate) and at Greenock (HMS Orlando and HMS Monck) where the Flag Officer was Vice-Admiral Bertram Watson, followed by Rear-Admiral Richard Hill. There were other significant naval presences under Western Approaches Command at Dunoon (HMS Osprey), Largs (HMS Monck), Inverary (HMS Quebec), Lamlash (HMS Orlando, later HMS Fortitude), Campbeltown (HMS Nimrod), Ardrossan (HMS Fortitude), Oban (HMS St Andrew, later HMS Caledonia), Lochalsh (HMS Trelawney), Stornoway (HMS Mentor), Aultbea (HMS Helicon) and Tobermory (HMS Western Isles).1 By the end of the war in 1945, the Royal Navy possessed 29 bases in Scotland, some 25 per cent of its global total.2

  The army in Scotland was equally well established and entrenched within the fabric of Scottish society. Scottish Command had its headquarters at Edinburgh Castle, and the GOC-in-C at the beginning of the war was General Sir Charles Grant, a Coldstream Guards officer, but he gave way in 1940 to Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Carrington, who had been commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery in 1901 and had served in the Boer War and the First World War. The command was divided into two areas: Highland with two nominal Territorial Army divisions, 9th and 51st, and Lowland with two nominal divisions, 15th and 52nd. Both areas also contained supplementary reserve units and various supply and service formations. The teeth arms were composed of 2nd Royal Scots Fusiliers at Redford Barracks in Edinburgh, 1st Highland Light Infantry at Fort George in Inverness-shire, 2nd Seaforth Highlanders at Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow and the Royal Artillery’s port defences at Leith, Gourock and Orkney.3

  Carrington did not last long in his posting. In June, under circumstances which are far from clear, he was replaced as GOC-in-C by Lieutenant-General Sir Andrew Thorne who had previously commanded XII Corps, responsible for home defences in south-east England, and who remained GOC-in-C Scotland for the rest of the war. An experienced Grenadier Guardsman, he brought an air of quiet authority, and proved to be an energetic and inspiring holder of the post. It had been largely due to him that Scotland’s home defences had been stabilised in the summer of 1940. In other circumstances he might have considered the move a demotion, as he left an operational command for an administrative command, but if he did feel any personal disappointment he never showed it. For his services in Scotland he was promoted full general in February 1945, and as Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Norway was given responsibility for returning Crown Prince Olav to Norway (see Chapter 12).

  All frontline RAF aircraft came under the control of Number 13 Group whose headquarters were at RAF Newcastle, with Sector Airfields at RAF Acklington in Northumberland, RAF Dyce in Aberdeenshire, RAF Turnhouse outside Edinburgh, RAF Unsworth in Northumberland and RAF Wick in Caithness. The fighter airfields were at RAF Catterick in North Yorkshire, RAF Drem in East Lothian, RAF Grangemouth in West Lothian, RAF Kirkwall on Orkney and RAF Sumburgh on Shetland. The Group was also responsible for the long-range early-warning Chain Home Stations at RAF Anstruther, RAF Bamburgh, RAF Danby Beacon, RAF Doonies Hill, RAF Drone Hill, RAF Hillhead, RAF Nether Button, RAF Ottercops Moss, RAF Shotton, RAF St Cyrus and RAF Thrumster. The Chain Home low-level stations were RAF Cockburnspath, RAF Cresswell, RAF Douglas Wood, RAF Fair Isle, RAF Rosehearty and RAF School Hill.

  Immediately war was declared all three service commands in Scotland faced urgent demands in preparing their regular and part-time units for service, and in making plans for the defence of the homeland. A year earlie
r the Royal Navy had decided that Rosyth could not be used as a main base as it was too far south to guard the vital northern gap between Shetland and Norway, and the bulk of the Home Fleet was moved to Scapa Flow and then to Loch Ewe (Aultbea). Almost immediately the sinking of HMS Royal Oak and the aerial attacks on Orkney and the Firth of Forth forced the Admiralty to re-assess its bases in Scotland to counter the threat of attack from the sea and the air. As a result the Firth of Clyde was also taken into account because it was on the western side of the country and enjoyed deep-water approaches, but it was finally decided to return to Scapa Flow once its anti-submarine and anti-aircraft defences had been strengthened. This led to a rapid expansion of the base’s infrastructure to guard and defend the Home Fleet, and huge numbers of service personnel made the long journey by train to the Pentland Firth crossing. To meet the need for suitable catering on trains between Perth and Thurso, the London and Midland Scottish (LMS) railway provided luxurious pre-war Pullman cars which were operated by members of the Salvation Army.4 Ahead lay the uncertain waters of the Pentland Firth to Orkney, and according to the historian of the North of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland Shipping Company, the company carried over 300,000 passengers over the Firth between 1939 and 1945, in addition to 176,000 sheep, 35,000 cattle and 4,500 pigs.5 At the height of its activities the Orkney garrison was some 60,000-strong.

  For the first time, too, many of them were women serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), the Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC), the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) or the various nursing and volunteer services. The waters of the Flow itself were home to a variety of headquarters ships, mainly obsolete warships or liners which had been reprieved from the breakers’ yards, but the shore areas of the mainland, Hoy, Flotta and South Ronaldsay were soon covered with a variety of hastily constructed buildings, notably the ubiquitous Nissen huts which were made of pre-cast corrugated iron, and which came in three different sizes. Gradually some leisure facilities began to appear including a large canteen, a garrison theatre and a 1,500-seat cinema, but due to its remoteness Orkney was not always a popular posting. True, some warmed to its big skies, fantastic seascapes, the local bird life and the long days of summer, but for many it was a dismal place which gave rise to one of the best-known pieces of doggerel about the vagaries of life on active service during the Second World War.

  This bloody town’s a bloody cuss,

  No bloody trains, no bloody bus;

  And no one cares for bloody us

  In Bloody Orkney.6

  And so it continues for several amusing verses. Under the title ‘In Bloody Orkney’ it was purportedly written by a certain Captain Hamish Blair, and it appeared in the pages of The Orkney Blast, a newssheet founded by the novelist Eric Linklater who responded to a request made for such a publication by the local GOC Major-General G. C. Kemp.

  The poem proved to be immensely popular, and soon gained a wide currency throughout the armed forces, where it was quickly adapted to reflect dismay at other equally unpopular postings. Its authorship has also been questioned – Blair was almost certainly a nom de plume – but the publication in which it appeared was real enough and equally well received. Linklater had strong local links with Orkney, and had served as a soldier in The Black Watch during the First World War before becoming one of the most popular and successful writers of his day. Shortly after the outbreak of war he had been commissioned in the Royal Engineers, and following acceptance of Kemp’s invitation to found a newspaper, he took on the Ministry of Supply to gain sufficient amounts of rationed newsprint by arguing that Orkney’s remote position made it a special case. He also secured the services of two remarkable soldiers, Private Gerry Meyer and Gunner Geoffrey Halton, who together edited the paper’s first editions after Linklater had been posted away from the islands. Eventually the circulation was 6,000, but as Meyer pointed out, its readership was probably ten or twenty times larger, perhaps even more, before it ceased publication on 24 November 1944.7

  In the period between 1941 and 1944 Scapa Flow was integral to naval operations in the Atlantic and the Norway coast (see Chapter 10), and it was also home to some of the largest capital ships in the Royal Navy. Amongst them was the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales which left the base on 21 May 1941 to join the battle cruiser HMS Hood in the Denmark Strait between Iceland and Greenland. Earlier that day aircraft of RAF Coastal Command had spotted the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen refuelling in a fjord south of Bergen in Norway, evidently preparing to break out into the north Atlantic to attack Allied convoys. It seemed an equal fight, but for all that the heavily armed ‘mighty Hood’ was the pride of the Royal Navy between the wars, she possessed old-fashioned armoured protection which made her vulnerable to long-range fire, while Prince of Wales was so new that she had not been fully worked up and still had contractors on board. When the ships made contact, an accurate shot from Bismarck annihilated Hood which exploded with the loss of all but three of her 1,415 crew, one of whom was Midshipman William Dundas whose family lived at Muthill in Perthshire. In the aftermath of the sinking Prince of Wales made good her escape. The loss of Hood prompted a massive retaliation operation which included the carrier HMS Victorious from Scapa whose Swordfish torpedo bombers were able to locate and hit Bismarck on the night of 24/25 May but, unfortunately, without disabling her. Following a protracted hunt the German battleship was eventually sunk by superior British naval forces two days later.

  The decision to concentrate assets on Scapa Flow had two knock-on effects for the navy in Scotland. Rosyth, so vital to North Sea operations in the First World War, became an important refitting and repair port which eventually had a workforce of 7,096 men and 2,204 women overseen by a staff of 21 naval officers and some 500 civil servants. With a sizable influx of workers from England, accommodation became a problem, and new houses had to be built at Rosyth and Dunfermline, with around 3,000 other workers being forced to travel by rail from outlying areas including Edinburgh and Falkirk.8

  The other change was in submarine operations. At the outset of war both Rosyth and Dundee had been designated as submarine bases, along with Harwich and Blyth in England. As the problems of air raids increased in 1940, Rosyth became a fulcrum of naval activity, and over-crowding became a problem with three depot ships operating in the Forth estuary. Eventually it was decided to explore options on the west coast, and on 21 June the depot ship Cyclops left Rosyth to anchor in the Holy Loch. At the end of August she moved to Rothesay Bay and was replaced by the depot ship Forth. A further move in October saw the depot ship Titania move from the Forth to the Holy Loch, with the result that by the end of the year the Clyde had become the main operational and training base for submarines of the Royal Navy, with twenty-five boats making up the Second, Third and Seventh Flotillas, thus beginning a relationship with the area which lasted throughout the post-war years and into the twenty-first century. At the same time the Ninth Submarine Flotilla remained on the east coast for operations in the North Sea, with its headquarters in Dundee (HMS Ambrose).9

  By far the best use of the Scottish land mass was made by what came to be known as ‘special forces’ – mainly commandos and operatives of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). This had come into being in the summer of 1940 and been given the task, in Churchill’s dramatic phrase, ‘to set Europe ablaze’ or, in the more prosaic words of its founding document, ‘to co-ordinate all action by way of subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas.’10 In fact SOE had its origins in an initiative taken by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, or MI6) in September 1938 to investigate sabotage tactics against Germany in the event of war. Out of this came a shadowy organisation within the War Office which was first named General Staff (Research) and then Military Intelligence (Research) or MI(R). Its duties were to study the dynamics and tactics or guerrilla or irregular warfare and to interview and train the necessary personnel. This was the organisation which had produced the Auxiliary Units under col
onels Holland and Gubbins, and they quickly extended the remit to operate overseas in enemy-held territory.

  Norway presented the first opportunity, and MI(R)’s response to the German invasion in April 1940 was to despatch a number of small teams to operate behind enemy lines and to make contact with the Norwegian resistance movement. Although they returned without achieving any of their objectives, one six-man team, Operation Knife, laid the foundations for MI(R)’s next move. Amongst its members was a Scottish landowner, Captain William Stirling of Keir, who had served earlier with 5th Scots Guards, a specialist ski unit hurriedly trained for winter warfare during the Norway campaign. With his cousin Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, Stirling proposed that a special training school should be established within the Scottish Protected Area, and this led to the War Office requisitioning the house and estate at Inverailort as Special Training Centre Lochailort in May 1940. Situated in the mountainous territory of Arisaig, off the road that runs from Fort William to Mallaig, it provided the perfect setting for the kind of secretive training proposed by MI(R). It was the first step in a process which would see large numbers of Allied military and naval personnel being given unorthodox training in the wilds of Highland Scotland, where for the most part they were out of sight and largely out of mind.

  Their story remained untold for many years, largely due to restrictions on reporting SOE’s activities and the withholding of official papers, but it is now clear that those training facilities played a major role in Scotland’s contribution to the war effort.11 The remote fastnesses of Arisaig and Morar proved to be ideal territory for training purposes, and through Scottish Command SOE added to its holdings by requisitioning other remote country houses and shooting lodges including Arisaig House, Camusdaroch, Garramor, Glasnacardoch Lodge, Inverailort, Inverie House, Meoble Lodge, Rhubana and Traigh House, all of which were located within the Protected Area and were therefore out of bounds to anyone without the relevant passes. Recruits and training staff were a mixed bunch, and they reflected the tough, no-nonsense yet frequently bohemian and eccentric approach adopted by many who were attracted to the special forces. One of the instructors at Glasnacardoch was Captain Gavin Maxwell of The Scots Guards, a grandson of the Duke of Northumberland who went on to write Ring of Bright Water, the classic account of his otter colony at Sandaig on the Sound of Sleat (named Camusfearna in the book). Another was Admiral Sir Walter Cowan, aged sixty-nine and a veteran of the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 (Kitchener’s defeat of Islamic fundamentalists known as Mahdists in Sudan), who served with No. 11 Commando and who helped with the handling of small boats.