After a week of negotiations Prime Minister Petain of France finally signed an armistice on Sunday, ceding all but two-fifths of France to Germany. Meanwhile, on Monday 17 June General Charles de Gaulle and some other French officers escaped to Britain (where within a fortnight he would be recognised as leader of the Free French). Also on 17 June the liner RMS Lancastria, which was being used to evacuate British troops and nationals from France, was sunk by German fighters with an estimated loss of over 4,000 people; this was the greatest loss in Britain’s maritime history. In central Europe, Soviet troops entered Latvia and Estonia.
Back in Caithness, air raid warnings were now a part of daily life. On 17 June, Wick North School log book records, “Air raid warning at 1.58 p.m. until 2.12. School did not assemble in afternoon”.
Schools broke up this week for the summer holidays. This was earlier than usual, and was not caused by air raids but to allow pupils to help with the ingathering of the harvest. The entry from Keiss School log book reads, “18 June 1940: Owing to war conditions the school was closed on this date instead of 28th”.
With the harvest on everyone’s minds, the John O’Groat Journal reported this week the arrival of the first “Land Girls” in Caithness. These women were part of the volunteer Women’s Land Army, who made up some of the shortfall in agricultural labour now that so many men were serving in the Armed Forces. Many farmers, especially those in Scotland, were initially sceptical about how useful they would be (as the reporter hinted, “Prejudices dating back to experiences of the last war have had something to do with this”); but by the end of the war the Land Army in Britain would number some 80,000 women.
In Wick, a room in Pulteneytown Academy was converted into a depot for making wound dressings using sphagnum moss. Once it had been gathered, the moss had to be cleaned, and any foreign plant or animal matter removed. Being naturally absorbent and containing mild antibacterial properties, sphagnum moss made an ideal filling for cotton dressings. But, as the John O’Groat Journal observed, “cleaning it is a slow and tedious business”, so volunteers were needed.
Getting the Local Defence Volunteers established was proving a complicated business. Admiral Sir E.S. Alexander-Sinclair of Dunbeath Castle, Company Commander in the LDV, wrote to Captain M’Hardy this week, expressing his exasperation with bureaucratic red tape: “… In fact it took me all week to get the forms. I called twice & then set Doull on to him! But I will try to get more method out of him in future. The first memo you sent me from the gent isn’t by any means clear to me, but the one I got this A.M. reads as if it had been written by a lunatic.”
Finally this week, the Breadalbane Cinema was showing a Boris Karloff movie, “The Man They Couldn’t Hang”. The picture had received a promising “H” classification, “Classified as “Horrific” – unsuitable for children”!
