by Trevor Royle
The other resident Polish squadron, 304 (Land of Silesia) had an equally strenuous war serving with RAF Coastal Command. Formed originally as a bomber squadron, it transferred to Tiree in May 1942 before ending up in Benbecula in the winter of 1944–5 when it flew exhausting long-range patrols over the Atlantic using specially adapted Vickers Wellington XIV bombers to hunt for German submarines. Successful operations were few and far between, but on the night of 5 May 1944 a Wellington commanded by Squadron Leader Leslaw Miedzybrodzki came across two U-boats recharging their batteries on the surface in the Bay of Biscay and went into the attack. Despite heavy anti-aircraft from both boats, which badly damaged the aircraft leaving its fuselage with ‘a hole big enough for a man to pass through’, Miedzybrodzki pressed home his attack and succeeded in sinking one of the enemy submarines.20
Given the effort put into those long-distance patrols over the wastes of the Atlantic, Miedzybrodzki’s successful attack raised spirits within the squadron, and as he remembered later it was a much-needed boost to their morale during a posting which was not one of the most attractive available to any Allied aircrew. ‘The nights were long and we had problems with the wind, sheep on the runway and the mice eating our woollen uniforms which we had to hang from string, attached to the ceiling. We did not have very much contact with the local people, but when we went to get our washing done by the locals there was great difficulty because they were Gaelic speakers.’21
Equally debilitating, and far more dangerous, were the operations undertaken by the other three Polish bomber squadrons – 300 (Land of Masovia), 301 (Land of Pomerania) and 305 (Greater Poland). Although these operated out of bases in Lincolnshire, many of the aircrew trained in Scotland at Operational Training Units at Grangemouth (58 OTU) and East Fortune (60 OTU). Amongst them was Władsyław Fila, who was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and flew a total of forty-two missions over Germany as a bomb-aimer in a Lancaster bomber. After the war he stayed on in Scotland, and he always regarded those operations as a way of hitting back at a hated enemy: ‘When I was flying deeper into German territory – some flying was nine hours or more – the deeper we went the more time I had to say several times over, that’s for Warsaw which you bombarded in 1939, and that’s for Posnan, and that’s for Lwow, and that’s for this town and that town. So we had full satisfaction of hammering them as hard as possible. And possibly the DFC I got was reward for that accuracy.’22
The other main Polish air force formation in Scotland was a Polish barrage balloon unit which formed part of 945 Squadron and served in north-west Glasgow before moving to the Fife coast of the Firth of Forth in the summer of 1942. By then the Polish 1st Armoured Division had come into being under the command of General Stanisław Maczek and the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade had formed at Leven in Fife out of the 4th Cadre Rifle Brigade. Many of the first Poles to arrive in Scotland were officers who formed cadres, and the preponderance of commissioned soldiers gave rise to allegations that they had deserted their men in France. (This was unfair: many of them had been in training at the time of the German invasion.) The original role of the paratroopers was to support an expected uprising by forces within the Polish homeland, and by September 1943 the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade numbered 2,500 officers and men under the command of Colonel Stanislaw Sosabowski, an experienced soldier who had fought earlier in Poland and France against German forces. Both formations took part in the fighting in France and north-west Europe following the D-Day invasion in June 1944 (see Chapter 11).
The Poles supplied the largest and most colourful of the European Allied forces in Scotland but they were not alone. Scotland’s closest neighbours, the Norwegians, also had a visible presence in Scotland, notably at Dundee which became the main centre for their naval and air operations. The arrival of the Norwegians was especially poignant. Not only did Scotland enjoy an historic link with the country – King Eric II of Norway married Princess Margaret, daughter of King Alexander III in 1281, and there were other links over the possession of Orkney and Shetland – but the country had attracted huge credit through its efforts to hold out against Hitler’s invasion plans in the spring of 1940.
In spite of attempts to retain its policy of neutrality, Norway was strategically important to both sides. The Germans relied on the country’s ports, especially Narvik, for the supply of Swedish iron ore, and possession of Norway was vital for providing naval and air bases for the prosecution of the war in the Atlantic and North Sea. After some prevarication an invasion was launched on 9 April, and following a campaign which lasted two months the Nazis succeeded in occupying the country, landing their forces at Oslo, Kristiansand, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik. Britain’s response was to lay mines off the Norwegian coast using minelayers from Rosyth and to despatch forces, including a Polish infantry brigade, to Narvik in an attempt to support loyal Norwegian forces in stemming the invasion, but it was all too little and too late. Although the operation enjoyed some initial success the subsequent attack on France in May forced the Allies to abandon the campaign in Norway. The British alone lost 4,500 casualties, mostly from the sinking of the aircraft carrier HMS Glorious, and amongst other vessels lost was the Dundee-based Polish submarine Orzel. Amongst the Scottish regiments which took part in this ill-advised and hastily organised operation was 1st Scots Guards which lost over a hundred men as battlefield casualties or prisoners of war.
As a result of the Allied failure King Haakon VII and his government went into exile on 7 June to continue the war against Germany. The first landfall for the escaping Norwegian naval vessels was Lerwick in Shetland, a restricted area which soon became a home-from-home for the Norwegian sailors. Following the capitulation a small naval force of 13 ships and around 500 sailors left the country and inevitably, given Norway’s proximity, Scotland became the main locus for its forces in exile. A Norwegian Scottish Brigade consisting of four rifle companies and a machine-gun company was formed at Dumfries. Initially it acted as a recruiting centre for exiled Norwegians, or Norwegians living in Britain, and by the end of the war 1,500 had passed through the Norwegian Reception Camp at Dumfries, many of them bound for the navy and merchant marine.
It was not until May 1941 that the Norwegians were recognised a national military unit and their relationship within the British command structure was agreed. Under the terms of the Armed Forces Agreement it was specified that the forces would be employed for ‘the defence of the United Kingdom or for the purpose of regaining Norway’, and that the force should be ‘commanded by Norwegian officers, using Norwegian regimental colours, distinctions and badges of the Norwegian Army’.23 Although the bulk of the Norwegian navy’s future operations were to be in the English Channel, the relatively modern destroyer KNM Sleipner was incorporated into the Rosyth Escort Forces, whose mission was to protect the coastal convoys in an operational area which stretched from Greenock to the Thames around the north coast of Scotland. This was Sleipner’s main task until 1944, by which time she had been joined by a minesweeping flotilla mainly operating out of Dundee. Amongst the vessels were four Norwegian minesweepers, one of which, KNM Thorodd, was home to one of the most unusual crew members on any side during the conflict – Bamse, a 14-stone St Bernard dog. While Thorodd was based in Dundee and later in Montrose the huge creature gained considerable local fame both for his friendliness and for his uncanny ability to shepherd drunk sailors back to their billets.24
Dundee was also home to HMS Ambrose, the shore-based headquarters of the Royal Navy’s 9th Submarine Flotilla which consisted of submarines representing the navies of Norway, the Netherlands, Free France and Poland. It was a unique example of naval co-operation,25 and the flotilla enjoyed a number of successes including attacks on the German convoys and on the capital ships Gneisenau, Prinz Eugen and Tirpitz. Norwegian boats were also involved in landing commandos and members of SOE, and it was during one of these operations that the submarine Uredd was lost with all hands in February 1943. Dundee, or at least
RAF Woodhaven on the Newport shore, was home to a flight of Catalina flying boats operated by 333 (Norwegian) Squadron which also flew a flight of Mosquito reconnaissance aircraft out of nearby RAF Leuchars. On the west coast 330 (Norwegian) Squadron performed similar duties, flying Sunderland flying boats out of Oban on anti-submarine patrols over the Atlantic. It has the distinction of being the first Norwegian naval air squadron to become operational during the war, flying elderly Northrop N-3PB torpedo bomber sea planes from Reykjavik in Iceland before moving south to Scotland.
For most of the people of the United Kingdom the most highly visible Allies were the personnel of the United States forces who began arriving in the country between 1942 and 1945. During that period over three million Americans, mainly men, arrived in the country or passed through it to join the invasion forces in France in north-west Europe following the D-Day landing in June 1944. Famously described as being ‘over-paid, over-sexed, over-fed and over here’, their arrival caused a major collision between two very different English-speaking cultures, and in some cases this led to serious social difficulties. The ‘Yanks’ were often homesick and bewildered by what they found in Britain, and, for their part, large swathes of the population were either bemused or unsettled by the encounter with their transatlantic cousins. Most of the Americans were based in England, firstly in East Anglia where the 8th US Army Air Force operated heavy bomber aircraft in the air war against German targets, and then across the southern counties where a huge expeditionary force started assembling for the promised cross-Channel invasion. By the end of 1942 the total stood at 241,839 but it was only a beginning: within a year the figure had risen to 918,347.26
Given Scotland’s geographical position and the nature of the Allied tactics during this period the complement of Americans was considerably smaller. For most US service personnel their only experience of Scotland was limited to the Clyde estuary and glimpsing the far-off hills after crossing the Atlantic in cramped troopships before heading south by train. Between May 1942 and December 1944, 339 troopships arrived in the Clyde from the US, bringing with them 1,319,089 US service personnel. Some of the luckier ones had their journeys broken at US transit camps at Gourock or Househillwood in Glasgow, and could venture out into the city where they were objects of extreme curiosity. Not only were their uniforms smarter than the generally drab British Army-issue battledress but they had access to unrationed cigarettes and chocolate. Several oral history archives contain references to sightings of US soldiers in Glasgow, and these include brief encounters at the Locarno dancehall in Sauchiehall Street but even so, their numbers were never large.27 For the most part permanent personnel were confined to parts of the central belt where numbers of US administrative staff and various specialists were based, especially in the period leading up to D-Day. Lanarkshire had the largest concentration with 1,976, while Ayrshire was home to 1,819, many of them based at Prestwick whose airport was used for the delivery of US warplanes under the lend-lease scheme. Other smaller centres included Renfrewshire (341), Midlothian (114) and Fife (206).28
Even at the highest levels they were confronted by misunderstandings when they met the local population. In September 1943 Lieutenant-General Omar N. Bradley and his staff flew into Prestwick at the end of the successful campaign in Sicily to prepare for the invasion of Europe. Their eventual destination was London but before travelling south they ate breakfast at Glasgow’s Grand Hotel at Charing Cross. Bradley’s aide and future ghostwriter Chet Hansen recorded the scene which left both sides thoroughly bewildered. Failing to understand the waitress’s accent when she offered a choice of hot dishes, they plumped for the second option only to find that they had refused sausages in favour of boiled fish and tomatoes. Worse followed when they requested ‘a pitcher of water’ but were then presented with a pot of hot water. Eventually their request was met with the bewildered response: ‘Oh, you want to drink it do you?’ At the end of the meal, when they paid their bill, Hansen recalled further confusion as they struggled with the local currency: ‘The Scottish girl at the cashier’s desk looked on the General amusedly as she picked from his hands the proper price of the breakfast. We then asked her delicately what the proper coin was for a tip. She pointed it out and we carried our tips back to the table feeling somewhat strange in this country that was already stranger in many respects than either Africa or Sicily.’29
Amongst the most sensitive issues in this friendly transatlantic invasion was the sudden and largely unexpected appearance of black service personnel. At the outbreak of the war the black community in the United Kingdom never numbered more than 8,000, and they were concentrated mainly in the port areas of Cardiff, Liverpool, London and Newcastle. In most respects the United Kingdom was overwhelmingly white, and this was especially true in Scotland where numbers of Afro-Caribbeans, Africans and Asians were always low. During the eighteenth century it had been fashionable for wealthy Glasgow families to employ black servants from slave plantations in the Caribbean, and in 1881 Arthur Watson of Queen’s Park Football Club became the first black footballer to play at international level for Scotland. However for the most part in the streets of Scotland coloured skins were mainly noticeable by their absence. (They remained so for many years: at the 2001 census there were only 8,025 blacks of African or Caribbean origin, a mere 0.16 per cent of Scotland’s population. At the same time the UK total was 1,148,738, or roughly 2 per cent of the country’s population.30) Bearing in mind that demographic pattern it is not surprising that both the British and the American governments gave serious thought to the possibility that the arrival of black service personnel in the United Kingdom might heighten racial tensions, and by the summer of 1942 there were only 811 black US soldiers in the country. Partly this was as a result of Washington’s concern not to upset an important ally, but it was also due to the fact that throughout the inter-war years racial segregation was a fact of life in the US forces. In June 1940 the US Army had only five black officers, while the Air Corps excluded them entirely and the navy only employed blacks as mess waiters.31
All that changed when the US entered the war and rapidly expanded the size of its armed forces to meet the need to fight a global conflict. Figures drawn up by the Pentagon estimated that of the one million conscripts at least 10 per cent of these would be black, and that the majority would end up being posted to the United Kingdom. Officially, the US view was that the ‘American negro was now integrated on a basis of complete equality in the economic and political life of the country’ but there is ample evidence to suggest that there was a colour bar and that the British authorities frequently colluded in maintaining it. Asked by the US authorities for his view, Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden suggested to the American ambassador in London that the British ‘climate was unsuited to negroes’.32 Confrontations between whites and blacks were familiar occurrences throughout the war, although there is also documentation to suggest that British people generally welcomed black US service personnel and felt that the worst violence was perpetrated by white officers and non-commissioned officers in the US forces.33
Although the presence of black service personnel was largely peripheral to Scotland’s experience during the Second World War, it did not mean that they were completely invisible. The numbers from North America were certainly small but in contrast there was a sizable concentration of black foresters from British Honduras (later Belize) in Central America who arrived in Scotland in the summer of 1941. Serving in the British Honduras Forestry Unit, these skilled foresters were based initially at three camps: Kirkpatrick in the southwest, Duns in Berwickshire and Traprain Law near Haddington; in the following year others arrived to take up work at Achnashellach, Kinlochewe and Golspie in the Western Highlands. From the outset they were engaged in essential war work in Scotland’s forests, dealing with home-grown timber and mainly producing pit props, under the direction of the Ministry of Supply. This lessened the demands on merchant shipping at a time when the German submarine offensives were taking their
toll on the Atlantic convoys, and the unit was also supposed to free Scottish-based forestry workers for other kinds of war work. It was also felt that the employment of the British Hondurans would have a positive effect by allowing them to send back much-needed pay to their dependants at home.
However, from the outset their treatment by the British authorities ranged from callous indifference to off-hand cruelty. Although most of the men were highly capable and used to dealing with heavy timber, they were treated as unskilled workers and paid minimum wages. Their camps contained basic facilities and their clothing was unsuited to the kind of conditions they faced in the harsh winter weather. Complaints were often ignored even when the facts were reported by visiting officials from the Ministry of Supply: ‘In general, the men are living in a deplorable condition almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. They are deprived of all form of entertainment and the harsh treatment of most of them by the authorities does nothing to alleviate their sufferings . . . A great portion of [them] are miserable and desperate.’34
All this was in contrast to the superior facilities offered to white foresters from Australia, New Zealand and Newfoundland, and the records suggest that there was a degree of casual racism in the response to the plight of the British Honduran foresters. The same report noted that the foresters’ ultimate overseeing officer, Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Carrington, was not ‘very knowledgeable or indeed very interested in welfare matters or . . . in the men as individuals’ and that as a result little was being done to alleviate the conditions in the Scottish logging camps.35 Supervision was minimal, and all too often the men were left to their own devices, with the result that morale slumped and sickness was prevalent amongst the workforce.
