This week the German invasion of Norway and Denmark finally began, and Britain’s so-called “Phoney War” came to an end. On 9 April the Germans captured a number of Norwegian ports and took Oslo. Denmark was overrun and surrendered. On the 11 and 13 British forces won two battles against German ships at Narvik, and on Sunday 14 April British and French troops began landing troops there. Back in Britain, the Enigma code was deciphered by the intelligence group at Bletchley Park for the first time on 14 April.
Over on Orkney, Hetty Munro recorded another substantial air raid: “On the 10th they [the Germans] came back with about 60 planes in waves of 3 and 4. Our fighters were up and those combined with anti-aircraft fire kept the enemy from coming through in large numbers.”
The John O’Groat Journal reported that, “German machines passed over Stroma several times and the whine of bullets and shrapnel could be clearly heard. It is reported that some pieces of shrapnel fell on the island. One or two shells which passed over Stroma fell into the sea on the south side.”
Perhaps reflecting the German invasion of Denmark and the increased air activity, log books for schools in urban areas recorded drills and practice evacuations for the first time since the autumn of 1939. On 12 April Pulteneytown Academy School in Wick noted, “A.R.P. practice evacuation at 3.30.”
The cost of the war to the Germans was highlighted this week with the burial of “two Nazi airmen” in an unnamed East Coast Scottish town on Thursday 11 April. The men received a full military funeral, their coffins draped with the “Nazi flag”, and three volleys were fired and the Last Post sounded.
The John O’Groat Journal reported in a leader on how the Northern Protected Area was working in practice, and the writer was not impressed: “Complaints have been rife concerning the delays experienced in procuring permits to enter,” he wrote; “the process of obtaining the permits is often attended with much inconvenience and irritation because of the endless strangulation in official red tape… The system adopted seems to be absurdly complicated and ridiculously slow in operation”.
Finally, away from the war, Thurso Burgh Council took the time to discuss the following rather alarming matter: “Councillor Bruce drew attention to the fact that children were maliciously damaging the trees in the mall, and that he himself had caught children chopping at the trees with hatchets.” The councillors decided to let the police deal with it.
