To record the ‘Home Front’ memories of local men and women from WW2
Mackay Country
Home Front Oral History Project
The Home Guard
The Home Guard at Loch Stack (ED11B)
The Home Guard in Scourie
“I remember –the men that were in the Home Guard were mainly some of them that were in the First World War; they were in the Home Guard, and also I remember Emslie Thomson, he wasn’t called up; he was in the Home Guard. And there was a lot of the keepers and people who worked on Westminster Estate; they were in the Home Guard. And they did their firearms training down on Scourie sands, there.
I’ll always remember that, you know, with their rifles. maybe once a week or something, or once a fortnight, they would have a firearms training down there. And they were all in uniform, too. And Fraser, the schoolmaster, he was in it, too. But mostly all the men, really, were in the Home Guard, that were – weren’t away at the war, you knew. The few men that weren’t away at the war.
I remember two Land Girls, yes, they were sent up to work, I think, it would be through the hotel – the hotel owner, that got them up here, because he worked a lot of the vacant crofts about here at that time, too. And they used to work the land as well.
The Scourie Planecrash
“It crashed on our croft, actually! In fact, I was at the pier gate with a friend of mine when we saw it circling. It went to circle round and its landing gear was down, so we took off and we ran round. And by the time we came running up at the road at the other side of the doctor’s there, it had crashed into the croft. And it had stopped in practically its own distance, and the pilot got out of it.
He wasn’t hurt. That – I think that was his second or third crash-landing. Spitfire, it was. And Colin Morrison from Badcall came down, and he ordered everybody to clear away. He was on the Coastguards, then. There was a hut up there, of course, and that was manned full-time during the war. Twenty-four hours a day. It’s razed to the ground now, but it was away up at the highest point, just out the back of Scouriemore there. It was manned twenty-four hours a day, watching out for passing ships and that. They had to report on the ships that were passing. Sarah’s father was on that, and Colin, that was another. Emslie Thomson and, I think Alex MacDonald. I think there was four or five of them and they were fully full-time employed on that. Radios, oh, aye.. Be all radio, then, I think, aye. I think it would be the Coastguard – would it be Coastguard?
He was a hardy man, Colin. He had been years in the Navy in the First World War. He had been over twenty years in it, I think, anyway. He was a regular. He certainly appeared down there, ‘cause we were all boys at the time and we were running around, but he kept everybody back, you know, from the crash. And a couple of days later it was all dismantled and taken away on a wagon. The pilot was all right. Hopped out. It didn’t go on fire or anything.
But he intended, I think, making a run along, but the nose just sort of caught and it sort of went up like that and down, you know. But, apart from that, he ran out of fuel. Oh, there were a lot of devil-may-care ones during the war, you know – the pilots. Probably didn’t have to get much training. Hadn’t the time to train them. I think it was his second or third crash-landing, he was saying, aye.
A lot of the debris that was coming in on the shores was tremendous, and the oil … you know, all the ships that were sunk and all that, the thick oil that was coming in on the stones. It was black, just round the shores, there. Terrible, aye. And there were bales of rubber coming in at the time. I always remember that. It had to go for processing, you know, it was just in the raw – bales of it.
There was mines; odd mines, coming off, too. I remember D.A. Macleod, they had to be evacuated out of their house in Tarbet one time, when the disposal crowd came up to put the mine … They would come up and shoot – fire at the mine and explode it. There was odd mines, right enough, exploding on the shores round here.
Mind you, a lot of big ships were up in Cairn Bhain during the war. The Rodney was up there, and they had a boom defence across there, actually - as you’re going up to Kylesku by sea …They had it right across from roughly about Duartmore to the other side. In fact, there’s some sort of debris yet, about – lying about the Calbha Islands there, … evidence that shows that … Oh, a lot of the big ships were up there, right enough, during the war. The Rodney was certainly up, I know.
They would go to Kylesku Hotel for, maybe, drink. They didn’t come down to Scourie at all. In fact, there were two of that mini-submarines that went to the … Tirpitz; I think it’s from here they went, if I recall it right.”
Scourie – Watching for Ships and Planes
“We used to go into the hut up there with the boys, and sit in there with them at times. And have a blether. They’d be watching for ships. They had to report aircraft, as well that were flying over, and identify them. There were things up on the wall to identify each plane, if they could identify them, and phone in, or whatever they did. And, of course, the Air Force were here. They had what they called a beacon light, and it was situated as you’re just going out of Scourie there … at what we call the Beacon. Well, that’s how it got the name; there was a beacon, a big motorised thing, and it gave the dash-dot-dot or whatever code it – that was flashing every night - opposite to the telephone exchange. The machine itself would have been probably situated on the road coming up from where the fish-farm garage is. And then their hut was there. Their hut was where that existing hut is. That’s where they slept, the RAF. Oh, they were here for a number of years. Some of them had been here for quite a while, but they would change, right enough, some of them would change over. It’s funny, I near forgot about that, right enough, the RAF.
And in those days, there would be the mail bus come in from Lairg … later Alex Mackay, that was in the First World War, he was on it. He was the only man in Scourie that had served in the two world wars. When he came back from the war, he was on the mail bus for a while, and then he packed that in and he ran a little shop down there. I think in the Second World War he used to come round recruiting, and I remember him on a big van wi’ a loudspeaker on it. Trying to get them to join up. Before conscription I think. Before National Service came in. National Service came in after the war. You just got called up, you had to go, during the war. Of course, you had to go for your National Service, too. Packed away to Wick for your medical, and if you passed it, then bang! Off you went. That’s where the medicals were done for all National Service, from this – the county of Sutherland. From 18 years old.”
Achriesgill – Memories of The Home Guard
“They used to go out, well, practising –like firing, and they used to go to the school to do some of their practising with their rifles and all the rest of it. If they weren’t inside they were out. They’d be behind a hill or something, practising with their guns, but they were never used.
It was a bit funny, seeing them coming down with their khaki thingummies on them – coats, and whatnot. Well, they would have got a coat out of it! And a pair of boots. And I can still see them walking down the road. A man down the road from us used to do all the shouting.
Folk had radios - I think mostly everybody had one. Listened to the news and whatnot, and if anybody hadn’t got one, they would be in the house that had one, you know, listening to it. When people used to come in to listen to it, it was mostly for the news. And it’s more or less the same time as what the news is on the radios now. You know, it was one o’clock, six o’ clock, kind of thing. And then there was one at midnight.”
