The German invasion of Western Europe gathered momentum this week. Holland tried to defend its borders, blowing up bridges and flooding lowland areas, but after the bombing of Rotterdam on May 14 had left 800 dead and 78,000 homeless the Dutch Government fled to Britain and the country surrendered. On 17 May German troops occupied Brussels and Antwerp. Meanwhile, German forces crossed the River Meuse; their tanks now began their rapid “blitzkrieg” advance north to the sea, cutting off the British and French armies in northern Belgium. On 14 May the British Government called for volunteers to join the Local Defence Volunteers, or LDV, the original name for what would later become the Home Guard. On 16 May Churchill flew to Paris and was told that the battle for France was already as good as lost. British forces occupied Iceland.
In Caithness, the response to the formation of the Local Defence Volunteers was immediate. The John O’Groat Journal reported that at a meeting of the Thurso branch of the British Legion on the evening of Wednesday the 15th, “a number of members gave in their names for enrollment in the Home Front Army, to be known as the Local Defence Volunteers, which is being created by the War Office.”
Elsewhere, all attention was focused on the new danger of German air raids. Both Wick and Thurso sounded the alarm on Sunday after German planes were sighted approaching from the sea, and many feared that the first proper raid of the war was imminent. Many people were in church at the time and “Ministers instructed those whose homes were nearby to leave, and the others to remain.” After half an hour when no attack had materialised the All Clear was sounded.
The head teacher of Pulteneytown Academy School to write to Mr McHardy, the Director of Education on 13 May “asking if pupils had to be sent into the streets if the A.A. guns had opened fire by the time we received the Air Raid warning.” Two days later the school log books records: “Gas-masks examined. A.R.P. practice at 12.30. Mr McHardy visited the school and intimated that children were to be dispersed under the conditions specified in my letter of the 13th.”
The risk to schoolchildren was understandably in the Director of Education’s mind this week. In a letter dated 18 May he wrote, “Our people do not seem to consider that the steps taken in Orkney were beneficial. I am still of the opinion that dispersal is an essential, and in talking the matter over with the headmasters the main addition to the working scheme is that if during a dispersal the children should hear the noise of gunfire they should get into whatever house or shop is nearest. I notice in a recent account that two French schools had been hit by bombs but fortunately outwith the school hours.”
Finally, Thurso Burgh Council also debated the question of what to do in an air raid, and whether more shelters should be built. The Burgh minute book and the John O’Groat Journal each record the discussion, with the newspaper’s account the more lively of the two. The minutes merely say that “Councillor Barry asked if anything was being done with regard to air raid shelters, and the Provost pointed out that, apart from the two public shelters made at the school and the Mission Hall, no further shelters were to be built.”
Whereas the newspaper adds the following exchange:
“The Provost: … The best air raid shelter is a house.
Bailie Lindsay: Air raid shelters are only for people caught in the streets.
Mr Barry: It is not enough.
The Provost: Write and ask to be appointed yourself instead of the present ARP controller.”
Whether the provision of shelters was enough, only time will tell.
