The week the Allies advanced into Tunisia, with Montgomery’s Eighth Army attacking the Germans and Italians on the Mareth Line while Patton’s II Corps began a flanking movement towards the Atlas Mountains. On 16 March Stalin called again for the Allies to open up a second front against Germany. Also this week, reports reached the West of the Katyn Forest massacre in spring 1940, in which the Soviet NKVD had murdered some 22,000 Polish army and police officers and members of the intelligentsia; it would not be until 1990 that the Soviet authorities finally admitted responsibility.
Stemster School had a distinguished visitor this week, when on 17 March “Nurse Cameron (Inspectress of Queen’s Nurses) visited the school at 10.30 this morning and gave a very interesting talk to the pupils on health and cleanliness.”
The Dunbeath report in the John O’Groat Journal stated that ploughing was fast going ahead at Ramscraig, including the ploughing of lea and stubble: “one could see within the radius of half-a-mile seven pairs of horses at work, all belonging to crofters. Only one horse of the 14 was a hired animal”.
Farming was also on the mind of ‘Norseman’ in the same edition of the paper, noting that the president of the National Farmers’ Union in a speech in Thurso had described oats as the “Cinderella of cereals”. Norseman went on, “We seem to remember that it was Samuel Johnson who spoke of it as something that was used in England for horses and in Scotland as food for men, a definition which justified an irate Scot into remarking that that was no doubt the reason why England produced the best horses and Scotland the best men.” Norseman could not foresee a time when wheat would replace oats in Caithness, even though “the laird of Noss had successfully demonstrated the possibilities of wheat-growing in the county.”
Finally this week, the Headmaster of Wick North School was obviously nettled by a communication from the County Clerk Depute for Education which stated that, “during Air Raid Alerts, teachers be instructed to see that pupils under their charge should go to Air Raid Shelters.” The school log book records that the Headmaster went to see the County Clerk Depute “personally” to discuss the instruction, “pointing out that only at three centres were there shelters for the pupils to go to.”
