On 11 February 140,000 Soviet troops attacked the Finnish Mannerheim Line, the start of an offensive that would ultimately break the Finnish defences. At the start of the week, Britain and France belatedly agreed an improbable plan to send over 100,000 troops to support Finland, but only if they could land at Narvik and be allowed to cross through neutral Norway and Sweden. And on 7 February Walt Disney Studios released the animated film “Pinocchio”.
In Caithness, the focus was on salvage, or what we would now call recycling, and local schools were being lined up to play a key role. The Director of Education prepared a circular to send to all schools “regarding the collection of tinfoil and the Lord Mayor’s Red Cross Fund’.
Similarly, the Education Committee debated the “Collection of Household Bones”, because “the reduction of the importation of raw materials makes the salvage and re-utilisation of all waste and dormant materials already in the country a matter of considerable national importance.”
Meanwhile, Staxigoe School recorded in its log book on 8 February that their participation in the county’s Gardening Scheme to grow food on school grounds had begun, it being “the first day of suitable weather”.
This week came the news that Douglas Swanson Sutherland, wireless operator on the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi, which had been sunk back on 23 November (see Week 15), was not among those taken prisoner and sent to Germany and therefore had to be presumed dead – a delay of over two months since he was lost and before his parents finally learned what had happened to him.
Meanwhile, as if wartime restrictions weren’t bad enough, the John O’Groat Journal reported that the bad weather had reduced Wick to less than a week’s supply of coal. (“Several merchants were entirely sold out and, owing to the difficulties of getting vessels, the closing of the harbour by stormy weather and a block on the L.M.S. Railway, it will be some time before the existing restrictions on sales may be removed.”)
Finally, and on a lighter note, the Director of Education wrote to Miss Bertha Waddell this week about the possibility of the Children’s Theatre coming back to the county (“the thought of your coming north in May brings back a pre-war atmosphere which is very happy in these troublesome times”). He concluded, “The main point is that we have all got our tails up and if the Children’s Theatre comes north they will not only be up but they will be wagging most merrily”.
