In the Ukraine Soviet forces retook the city of Kharkov, but the Germans counter-attacked on 21 February. On 18 February the students associated with the anti-Nazi youth group “White Rose” were arrested in Munich by the Gestapo. In Burma the “Chindits” cut the Mandalay- Myitkyina railway line; and in the Pacific on 21 February American forces took the Russell Islands from the Japanese. 
The John O’Groat Journal announced that two naval men from Caithness, Lieutenant William Macdonald of the RNVR, and Chief Engineer Norman McAskill of the Merchant Navy, had been awarded DSCs, and Captain David Sinclair of the Merchant Navy had won the OBE. All three men attended an investiture at Buckingham Palace to receive their decorations from the king. Chief Engineer McAskill had been in a prison camp in North Africa, but had escaped with 300 others last year. With the aid of French patriots the men had scrambled onto a goods train and hidden in the wagons, “and lay on the floor covered with blankets and rugs”; the train had then taken them all the way to Algiers.
The weather and illness were still taking their toll on the schools of Caithness. The head teacher of Bower School recorded in the log book on 15 February: “Very stormy – full westerly gale with heavy rain – only 19 pupils present.” Two days later the record states that one pupil “had to be excluded from school today as her hands show a serious attack from scabies”.
Interestingly, given the aircraft’s high reputation today, Sir Archibald Sinclair, Minister for Air, had to defend the record of the Spitfire fighter in the House of Commons, as reported in the John O’Groat Journal. A report had suggested that “in North Africa Allied fighter ‘planes were outclassed by the Germans”. Sir Archibald replied “I think that the result of the fighting alone shows the truth… in the first three months of the campaign in North Africa 607 Axis ‘planes were destroyed for the loss of 250 Allied ‘planes.” 
Finally this week, the people of Caithness were given a novel incentive to contribute to Wings for Victory Week: “Two thousand 500lb. and 250lb. bombs covered with savings stamps will be dropped on Germany after the Wings for Victory Weeks end in June. The bombs will be available [locally] and people can stick on them stamps that must first be cancelled.” People would be writing off the value of the stamps, in the knowledge that the bombs they’d stamped would be dropped on enemy targets.
