After weeks of fighting the Italian 10th Army was in full retreat from Cyrenaica in Libya. Now the British XIII Corps cut them off and, after heavy fighting, forced the surrender of some 130,000 Italian soldiers on 7 February. The 10th Army had been effectively destroyed, and on 9 February Churchill ordered British Forces to be redeployed to Greece. Ominously, however, Lieutenant-General Erwin Rommel took charge of German forces in North Africa this week, as Hitler honoured his commitment to support Mussolini.
Caithness experienced another major snowstorm this week, in what was turning out to be a winter of storms. Almost all the schools in the county had to close. In Barrock Assembly School the teacher recorded only 3 pupils present on 5 February, and “as the weather showed no immediate signs of improvement, I saw the children safely home.”
In Gillock School log book the teacher recorded on 7 February, “As Wednesday was a day of ‘Blinding Drift’ there was no school that day and the roads which had just been opened after the previous storm were again blocked. D. McKay has been assisting at the cutting of the roads these two days without leave. The road to Bower [Station] has never been opened, the scholars from there are consequently absent.”
Even the county’s Director of Education ran into difficulties. On & February he wrote, “The weather would take advantage of the circumstances! I spent several hours in Claredon myself using the footboards to dig myself out.”
Two members of the Home Guard from Ousdale Farm in Berriedale were finding it hard to get to drill. “We got a notice to attend drill in the Borgue School on Monday nights, as it’s 6 miles from Ousdale it’s impossible for us to attend and although we were getting petrol it has been impossible for anyone to ride a motor cycle any Monday night since the drill started, with ice and we have the two Berriedale Hills.”
Mines were an increasing menace at the start of 1941. The Wick Coastguard reported on 5 February, “We heard another explosion similar to the one we reported earlier to-day. The explosion occurred South of this Station in the region of the Trinkie Swimming Pool.”
Finally this week, The John O’Groat Journal reported the award of a Distinguished Service Medal to one of the survivors of HMS Jervis Bay, Seaman Donald Bain of 
Wick, for “courage and devotion to duty”. It was thought to be “the first war decoration won in this war by a Wick man, and it is fitting that it should be in connection with such a gallant action as that of the Jervis Bay, on which 18 Caithnessmen were serving, nine of whom lost their lives.”
