John Munro’s War: Part 7 – 1946

In May John’s name again appears in the farm diary being paid the same rate as Roy, now on 76 shillings per week. He was finally released from military service in July. He was described on his army testimonial as a reliable type, a good driver who carried out his duties in a hard working manner. The tank commander who went on to spend 3 years in enemy labour camps never drove again, except the farm’s tractors. The enthusiastic, rebellious teenager who enlisted without his parents knowledge in May 1939 returned home a thoughtful, fairly reserved man. Always affable and sociable when required he never pursued much of a social life outside the family, unlike his young brother, Roy. Never dated. Never married. He was a voracious reader and his extended knowledge and intelligence meant he was always engaging to talk with. Quick to laugh and anger in equal measure he could be insensitive at times but was considerate and kindly for all that. While his mind remained sharp his body was crippled by arthritis and he suffered greatly but a friendly vet was on hand to prescribe painkillers for John as well as for the animals on the farm.

There was symmetry to John Munro’s war. He enlisted as an 18-year-old on 9 May 1939 and was freed from his prison camp around 9 May 1945. In May 2011 with his health deteriorating John one day decided he’d endured enough, went upstairs, climbed into bed, turned his face to the wall, refused food and drink and waited for death which came on the 12 May, at the age of ninety.  

John Munro’s War: Part 6 – 1945

Agricultural difficulties intensified at home and regular crop rotations were stopped mainly because of government demands on farmers to overwork the land so it had no time to revive fertility because the soil’s minerals were so depleted from constant cropping. The work on the family farm was shared between John’s father and seven full-time men and three women: the grieve (gaffer), foreman ploughman, second ploughman, shepherd, cattleman, second cattleman, tractor driver*, dairymaid, poultry woman* and part-time clerkess*. Those marked * lived in the farmhouse with the family and other labourers were accommodated in farm cottages, receiving the usual perks in addition to wages of 4 pints of milk daily, a half-ton of potatoes, 6 bolls of meal and 3 ton of coal plus firewood every six months. Women always received less pay than the men except when John’s sisters were employed during busy times such as tattie planting when they were paid at the same rate as their brother, Roy (before Roy’s earnings rose to 71 shilling per week). POW labour on the family farm cost £12. 14s. in February and again in March but there is no record how many were employed or how much each man earned. The POWs employed on John’s family’s farm probably were living a mile or two away at Brahan. Local children used to play with wooden toys made by POWs such as dancing figures made out of wood and string.

Throughout the war the retention of skilled farm labour continued to cause major problems. Farming can’t be done by just anyone but requires high levels of familiarity with land or animals, changing seasons and crop developments and that is why agricultural labourers were the last to be called up. In 1945 only four horses were part of the farm’s workforce.

By the end of 1945 one million former old grassy areas of Scotland had been ploughed for additional cultivation. Between 1941 and 1944 the production of top-quality beef improved. So, too, did yields of barley, wheat and potatoes and milk.

The winter of 1944/45 was severe across mainland Europe. Conditions within the camps was deteriorating for POWs and German camp guards. Hunger and starvation affected almost everyone and Red Cross parcels became an even greater target for the malnourished and sick trying to survive freezing conditions in the long winter.

Between the 13th and 15th February 1945 Dresden was one of several large German cities targeted by allied bombers. It’s relative proximity to John’s camp probably meant he saw some of the results of it being blitzed with incendiary devices that lit up the sky and were visible for almost 100 miles around. It must have appeared to many allied prisoners that the tide was turning for the German government. And indeed it was. A second wave of bombing followed about three hours after the first to confuse and hinder rescue personnel on the ground trying to put out fires. A group of 254 Lancaster bombers with 500 tons of high explosives and 375 tons of fire bombs devastated the city, blowing off roofs and blowing out doors and windows exposing building interiors to the flow of air that drove fires across the city. Ruptured water mains meant there was nothing available to fight the flames of the thousands of fires that blazed for hours. In the resultant firestorm much of the city was destroyed and the dead which numbered between 25,000 and 30,000, including POWs and fleeing refugees.

Allied POWs, including those from nearby camps, were put to work clearing up and retrieving bodies from the ruins for mass burial. The American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, a POW there are the time, recalled that there were

“too many corpses to bury. So instead the Nazis sent in troops with flamethrowers. All these civilians’ remains were burned to ashes.”

“We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.”

“I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them.”

(Lothar Metzger, survivor)

While industrial targets were said to be the targets, the intention behind the bombing of Dresden was to create confusion for the German government by forcing tens of thousands of people to try to escape from the region so choking up the east’s communication and travel infrastructure. Other raid followed in March and April – action that suited the ally from the east, the Soviet Union, whose troops were advancing towards Berlin and welcomed disruption in eastern Germany that wrecked any plans the German government might have had of concentrating its authority in this part of the country.

The destruction of Dresden in February destroyed so many of the region’s transport links that any supplies including food became extremely scarce. Stalag POWs were drafted into the city to help clear it of bodies, many victims were elderly or mothers and their children along with POWs and refugees who were unlucky enough to be caught up in the bombing.

With the breakdown in infrastructure towards the end of the war there were greater food shortages than ever with an increase in food parcel thefts but on 12 April 1945 John wrote –

“Dear Mam, Hope you are all well at home. I am all right at present as a supply of Red Cross parcels came through although the cigarettes were short owning to looting. I had a letter from you dated 12th Nov now this week and I am looking forward to more letters and cig or personal parcels if I am lucky enough. I am your loving son, John.”

Two days later, on 14 April, POWs, often weak from hunger and sick, were marched in cold and wet weather south towards the Sudetenland to avoid falling into hands of the Red Army but they came under constant attack from the Soviet air forces on their enforced march. The German armed forces in the west surrendered unconditionally on 7^th May. On 8 May German guards abandoned their posts leaving POWs to walk away, heading towards American lines.

Back home John’s father unaware of his son’s liberation was concerned with that season’s crop of Golden Wonder potatoes and oats. An experienced farm valuator he travelled to Leckmelm on the 7^th to carry out a valuation there. It was rogation day and a bank holiday in Scotland. An additional horse had been purchased for the farm bringing the number back up to five and perhaps this was a consequence of continuing labour shortages and recently introduced shorter hours for farm labourers that made organising the work more tricky although POW labour was still available. The weather that summer was good and as a result the oat crop was heavy but barley less good. Potatoes, too, were disappointing because of late ground frosts that stalled growth. The cattle herd was doing fairly well but lacking in protein because of ongoing scarcity of animal feed. Sheep faired better with good lambing numbers.

John Munro’s War: Part 5 – 1944

Food supplies were continuing to cause concern at home. Much of the farm’s potato crop was destroyed by blight. Cattle feed was so scarce the beasts spent more time on grass in an attempt to fatten them up for market. Labour costs were increasing because of the difficulty finding skilled farm workers. John senior was always very involved in local farming business and was attending meetings of the Agricultural Executive Committee (A.E.C.) a country-wide organisation setup following the declaration of war and chaired by lairds and prominent men with working farmers such as John’s father providing the actual expertise of day-to-day farming. The committees had sweeping powers to go onto land to ascertain the best way to cultivate it to prioritise food production. While each locality had its own group the government through the Scottish Department kept tight overall control. Through local A.E.Cs labourers were assigned to farms, including casual workers, the Women’s Land Army and POWs (many Italian and German) in desperate attempts to fill the gap in experienced agricultural men. Previously unworked land or at least land that had not been cultivated for many years was put under the plough and planted where possible or used as pasture for stock.

Allied POWs were worked hard as substitutes for German workers drafted into the military. That statement should be qualified for being interned in a camp did not automatically mean you undertook work. Conditions and prisoners’ rights within camps including work provision, education, food, religious observances and leisure were covered by the 1929 Geneva Convention which relied on the 1899 Second Hague Convention that specified that prisoners of war could only be employed on work which would not be “humiliating to their military rank” – in effect officers were exempt from physical labour unless they chose otherwise. NCOs were only required to do supervisory work. While NCOs and officers had it cushy other ranks endured long hours of work, some of it hard such as breaking stones for roads, road making, salt or coal mining while frequently suffering from malnutrition. Weak from starvation POWs would glean what they could when outside the camps searching anything edible such as dandelions. That said John found ordinary Germans generous – sharing what little they had with POWs. He may have been employed on a farm given his background but I have no evidence of this.

For men like John (and they didn’t have it as hard as Soviet prisoners) they might have one day in twenty-one off from work but conditions varied across POW working camps. And who you were, as we’ve seen. Officers and NCOs were very fortunate to enjoy opportunities to study and pursue hobbies in arts and crafts, setup clubs and put on entertainments since they were less exhausted than men and women enduring long, long shifts working.

The dire food situation lent importance to the provision of Red Cross parcels each POW was sent from the international organisation. Every week of the war around 97,000 Red Cross parcels were sent out from the UK. Each parcel contained about 17 items and while contents were fairly standardised because they came from different nations and supplied various nationalities within the international mix of camps they provided opportunities for trading items e.g. dried fruit; coffee; chocolate; cigarettes; tinned meat; fish. John would never eat salmon after the war and I wonder if this was because of a surfeit of tinned salmon while in confinement. British food parcels contained variations on a theme – tea, cocoa, chocolate, tinned meat; steak and kidney pudding, meat hash, sausages, Irish stew, bacon, pork luncheon meat, chopped ham. There was usually processed cheese, condensed milk, dried eggs, sardines or herrings, margarine, sugar, vegetables, biscuits, a bar of soap and 50 cigarettes or tobacco. Scots like John would have received rolled oats for porridge. Inevitably Red Cross parcels attracted thieving and towards the end of the war this greatly increased causing malnutrition among prisoners forced to try to exist and work long shifts on very inadequate rations. German food was limited – something like sausage, soup, some sort of fresh meat occasionally and meals made from dried peasemeal. The loss of their parcels also dealt a blow to the morale of POWs who not only depended on them for sustenance but as a diversion from the awful reality of their predicament. POWs also were provided with medical parcels containing cotton wool, safety pins, soap, aspirin, ointment, various medicines and vitamins and toilet paper. Only Soviet POWs had no access to Red Cross parcels because the Soviet government refused to work with the Red Cross. Unfortunate Soviet prisoners had to rely only on tiny German rations and helps explain why so many of them perished while in camps.

The Red Cross and St John War Organization issued monthly newspapers for next of kin of POWs. Because of paper shortages these were not on public sale. The Prisoner of War newspapers were no different from the rest of the press and adhered to government propaganda to create an optimistic impression of life in camps and the publication’s cheeriness irritated some POWs who thought it promoted a false impression of life in camps. The May issue in 1944 reported the need for families to retrain from sending lots of letters to their family member because the British camp leaders in each of the German camps struggled to cope with the sheer amount of mail sent out from the UK that had to undergo censorship and finding the correct recipient with several people sharing the same or similar names, and called for just one letter per week per POW.

At the end of April John sent a postcard home alerting his family to the increasingly dire situation of lack of food and his father immediately contacted the Red Cross expressing his concern at what was taking place in the camp. He forwarded John’s postcard to them. A reply from the Scottish Branch of the Red Cross was sent on 4th May 1944.

“Dear Sir

Re: Tpr. John MUNRO, P.O.W. ******, Stalag IV.A.ARB.Kdo.No 1162

Your letter of 29 April enclosing letter card received from your son, addressed to the Next-of-Kin Parcels Depot, has been passed to this Department for attention.

We are well aware of the conditions which exist at the camp in which your son is Prisoner, but such conditions apply to a large part of that particular area in which the camp is situated. The matter has, however, been brought to the notice of the Directorate of Prisoners of War, who are taking the necessary action to ensure that in the near future, you will hear from your son that things have, in fact, improved.”

John never mentioned them in his letters but in January of 1944 enough musical instruments for a 9-piece orchestra were diverted to Stalag IV-A from Italian camps – 3 violins, a cornet, 2 saxophones, a viola, a clarinet and a set of drums.

John Munro’s War: Part 4 – 1943

On 12^th April a defunct railway carriage arrived by rail, probably at Strathpeffer station, or perhaps Dingwall or Muir of Ord, bought from a farmer at Castletown in Caithness and presumably intended as an additional henhouse. On the same day John’s father paid out £33 for 10 tons of seed oats. With government pressure on farmers to extend land use and increase crop yields the Marginal Production Scheme was established in the spring of 1943 with grants provided to encourage farmers purchase fertilisers to try to increase fertility in previously designated poor marginal land.

The next letter I have finds John in work camp Stalag IV A, near Dresden in southern Germany. Stalag means soldier and stalags (stammlager or base camp for enlisted personnel) were camps for non-commissioned allied troops. Camps for commissioned officers were called oflags. There were two Stalag IV-As – the original one at Elderhorst but from February 1941 the camp at Hohnstein Castle began taking in increasing numbers of prisoners and became Stalag IV-A.  The 1941 number of prisoners under Stalag IV-A was 22,000, later rising to 32,000. Many Soviet prisoners were confined here. They and Polish prisoners were provided with the smallest food rations and allocated the most difficult work assignments.

Some officer POWs were held here for a time but nearby oflag, Colditz Castle, became famous for the daring escapes from there. All camps had their own stories of daring escapes. John had a low opinion of POWs in Colditz because their confinement was cosy compared with the desperate conditions of men in the stalags. As well as stalags and oflags there were several other types of internment camp designations: intelligence, civilians, maritime, air force etc.. Each German military district was identified by a Roman numeral. IV was the Dresden military district covering many camps. By 1942 the district had about 700 work camps – a flexible number that altered according to labour requirements for different industries.

Every kind of industry and occupation in the region employed POWs – coal mining (lignite or brown coal), transport, chemical production, shoe manufacture, horticulture, cement works, timber yards, textiles, hospitals – psychiatric, medical, surgical, convalescent. Hohnsetein POW camp was an administrative centre for a huge network of external camps with its main task the distribution of POW and forced labour to workplaces.  Hohnsetin castle was the area’s command headquarters.

John writes to his mother, in pencil on a plain letter postcard on 21st November, 1943 –

“Dear Mam, Here is another post card to let you know I am all right. We are getting our Red Cross parcels now. I have not had any letters yet but I should get one for Christmas. I hope everybody at home is well. The weather in this country is similar to home so I should not feel the cold much when I come home. Well, I must close now. I am, your loving son, John.”

POW mail was often stamped several times over, going through various checks. There’s a Stalag IV B stamp on this lettercard and I think because John passed through IV B as a transfer prisoner around the time of Italy’s collapse. Military district IV referred to Dresden. John was also held in Poland for a time but I know nothing about the circumstances.

On 17 December 1943, John’s mother was sent a letter from the Scottish Branch of the British Red Cross. John was then in Stalag IV B.

“We are sorry we are unable to change the camp address of the parcel, as it had already been despatched. We do not think you will have any anxiety regarding its safe arrival, as we feel sure it will be forwarded on to him at his new address. We have noted the new address on our records and trust you are having good news from your son.”

Stalag IV-A

In recent years it has emerged that when Italy was on the brink of collapse that British officers stepped in as de facto guards to prevent POWs escaping and attempting to rejoin their army units that were spread here, there and everywhere. An order was issued from within a secretive branch of Britain’s Ministry of Defence and transmitted as a religious broadcast on a BBC programmed called The Radio Padre that all British POWs should remain in Italian camps and wait for the arrival of UK forces. Perhaps in London they didn’t realise Germans could understand English but whatever an order went out for some 50,000 allied POWs to be transferred to Poland and Germany. POW deaths were high during the transfers and subsequent years in Nazi labour camps. The original order subsequently disappeared from the War Office archives at Kew. The 1940s equivalent of deleted Whatsapp messages.

John Munro’s War: Part 3 – 1942

War in the Western Desert was not going well for Britain with Rommel’s tank corps making steady headway.  At the end of May a fresh German offensive broke through the British defensive line forcing the British back to Egypt.

Back on the farm 69 acres were put under oats, 30 with barley, 10 with potatoes (Kerr’s Pinks and Redskin), 24 with turnips, 61 acres were sown as meadows and 120 left under grass and so on. John’s sister, Margaret, was again helping occasionally such as at tattie lifting in October, alongside school children on their tattie holidays. Tattie picking holidays were established in Scotland in the 1930s to provide extra labour to gather-in potato crops in autumn and came into their own during the war when labour was in short supply and picking up tatties didn’t take skill, only energy. During wartime shortages of experienced farm workers created a few headaches because the production of food was essential not only for the domestic market but to provide for military personnel overseas. Men’s wages were increased in January of 1942 from 48 shilling per week to 60 shillings. Women were always paid less irrespective of their skills. With so many men on military service women were recruited as the Women’s Land Army, their deployment falling under the Secretary of State for Scotland. 

On January 3 John’s thoughts were very much on the Scottish Hogmanay and his aunt and uncle from Inverness who visited at the beginning of each new year. Then a little over a week later John’s mother, Bella, is sent a letter written in a beautiful hand from Seaforth Avenue, Durban, Natal, South Africa.

“Dear Mrs Munro,

This is just a short letter to say that we had the pleasure of entertaining your son, John, during his short visit here. We took him and his two chums one from Dundee and one from Glasgow to see some of the sights near the town including the wild monkeys. Then we brought them home for supper and they spent the evening with us. The boys enjoyed their stay here and it was a nice break after their long voyage. They also tasted some of our fruits which they had never even heard of before. They all looked very fit and well and very brown. This is the first Scottish boys we have had and we enjoyed their company as we come from Perthshire.

We think it a great privilege to be able to do something for the boys as we are too old for military work so we do what we can in the hope that this letter will be some comfort to you.

Trusting that this will find you and your husband fit and well and that you will soon have your son home again. We are yours sincerely, Mr and Mrs J. Shephard.”

On the 30^th of January 1942 John wrote home from his training base to reassure the family he was alright and getting settled in camp. He makes a guarded reference to his visit to Durban but not by name, to avoid the censor’s blue pencil –

“Did you get any letters from a town we touched on our way out. There was a couple there who took us around who said they would write home. They came from Scotland. This place is not very hot just now. It is just like summer at home but it is very cold at night. It is pretty dusty too and every step you take raises a cloud of it. Today was pay day and we got 100 piastres or ackers as they are called. It is equal to £1 but it does not stay as long as anything worth about 1d at home costs about an acker here. We get our washing washed and ironed for 3 ackers by the dobeys or something that sounds like that. There is a Church of Scotland canteen down the road called Scots corner. The funny thing about this money is that you have a pile of notes and it may not be worth 10/-. You get notes for 5 ackers worth about 1/-. When we were on the train coming here a swarm of hawkers came on and started selling a lot of trash bangles wallets etc. As there was no money among us they started to change them for old pens and odds and ends. I never changed anything as there was nothing worth buying. I would look very nice I daresay with a string of beads round my neck and a few bits of stuff round my wrists. Some of the rest of them changed stuff. They will be throwing it away yet likely enough. We get good enough grub and beds here but we have a few partners in the beds with us. The place is full of them. I hope everything is all right at home.”

1d is 1 penny and /- is the sign for shilling. He goes on to mention the family at home and complains at the time, sometimes months, it takes for mail to arrive. Finally there is a reference to the troops’ allocation of 50 cigarettes and extra 4d a day colonial allowance.

Between censorship, distance and sheer volume of military mail letters took on average three months to be delivered but telegrams were sometimes a possibility, albeit an expensive one. On 2nd February 1942 John sent a Via Imperial telegram to his mother.

“ALL WELL AND SAFE PLEASE DONT WORRY KEEP SMILING.”

This was followed up five days later by a brief pencil-written letter informing the family of his new address – B. Squadron, 3 R.T.R., M.E.F. (Middle East Forces). He expresses relief having at last joined a battalion for he was fed up of the –

“…spit and polish at the Fort but in a battalion they have a bit more sense…It seems funny to be in the middle of winter and the sun shining every day. It is a bit cold at nights though.”

While this letter was written in February, he realised his mother would not receive it until the summer.

On 14 February John sent home an airgraph, a type of telegram that photographed letters in miniature and sent them on by airmail. He was again frustrated at not receiving mail and it’s clear he was thinking a great deal about the family at home in Scotland. He drew the letter to a close as the last post was being sounded asking his teenage brother Roy if he has been busy keeping down the rabbit population on the farm. Rabbits were often shot but they were also trapped with snares.

“This is not the sort of country to be in to be setting traps in here. You would need to watch them 24 hours per day. They would pinch the colour from your shirt and swear down your throat it was white. There is a lot of dud coins too. If you give them a five acker piece or upwards they will ring it on a stone and as like as not refuse it. After a few days you do the same yourself or if not you will have a pocketful of useless stuff on you. I got rid of all my duds so just now I am all right (I hope). They pester you all over the place in town trying to brush your boots or sell you something. You get a real good   feed here though. Plenty of eggs. 4 eggs and chips tea and bread and salad and what not for about a bob (or five and six ackers). Well Roy that’s lights out so I will close . . . I saw a right good acrobatic turn the other night. It would beat anything Bertram Mills circus ever had. Well Roy, cheerio, I am your loving brother, John.”

On 10^th March 1942 he wrote to say he had received a letter from his Mam, his mind is on what was happening with the routine seasonal work on the farm such as spring sowing and describes a little of his impressions of agriculture in the middle east –

“You should see them pumping water out here for the fields, you should get Roy busy with a pump if you get a dry year … I was pretty lucky I came here according to the newspapers as the other places do not seem so healthy the last few months.”

In addition to his usual interest in what the family are up to he mentions a picture card he’d sent home, possibly of Durban, and makes a reference to a sea journey, likely from South Africa to North Africa with his tank regiment.

“I was not seasick although the most of them was in a bad state for a few days.”

He regrets never receiving local newspapers sent to him by his mother and urges her to forward the Ross-shire Journal, closing by asking if anyone else at home has been called up.

“I think I had better close as I am going down to get my tea. I am your loving son, John.”

On 24 March John again complains that so few letters sent to him from home are getting through to him. You can be sure his close-knit family were writing and problems with the mail system were at fault. His mood is low and he has little to say aside from a mention of dust storms in the area. However, days later, on the 29 March his mood has lifted. Those longed-for letters and a telegram from home have finally arrived. Three of those letters had been posted from Scotland in December of the previous year and another, from his sister Margaret, sent on 1 January 1942. On receiving them John immediately wrote back. Life in the unit was monotonous he indicates and it appears he is lonely; complaining of not seeing anyone he knows or even any fellow Scots despite Scots being in the vicinity. He refers to the weather, already hot, is growing hotter and how hot it was on the boat (north from South Africa) and his sunburn.

“It was so hot that a lot of us got our hair all cut off. We looked like a bunch of convicts but it is a fair size again. What I am wondering now is whether I will part it or just let it grow. I think I will have it without a parting as I have got my combe broken and I did not have the chance to get another. I was wondering if I could manage to make one out of a petrol tin but I gave it up. Still I’ll get one soon I hope.”

Looking good was still a priority despite the privations of life in the Western Desert.

Those local newspapers he longed for eventually arrived, or rather clippings from them – the Bulletin I’m not familiar with and the North Star I think was The North Star and Farmers’ Chronicle. He writes about how much he’s missing news of home and is longing to read about what’s happening there, again requesting his family send him copies of the Ross-Shire Journal even though they’ll be six or eight months out of date by the time he eventually gets to read them.   

3^rd April 1942. In a letter to his mother John’s mood is again flat and he has little to say. He’s in north Africa and suffering in the heat. There’s a mention of getting his RAC beret (which he wore all his days while working on farming after the war) and going off to the pictures “in a whilie” within the camp as they aren’t allowed out.

“We handed in our kitbags today to go away and we will get paid today. I have the new address but it is only after embarkation. You had better hang on for a day or two before you write. Well that’s all, I am your loving son, John.”

If only we had his mother’s letters to him. Sadly, none have survived.

Back at home newspapers were full of the war in the desert and the struggle against Rommel’s forces.  Young John was a tank commander in the thick of the action that involved hundreds of jousting tanks and continual whizzing and cracking of exploding shells that left spirals of white smoke hurtling skyward and explosions of flames as tanks were hit and caught fire. Visibility was cloaked with clouds of desert sand and thick acrid oil vapour from blazing tanks.  The clamour was deafening.

29 April 1942. John receives an airmail letter from home that took only a fortnight to arrive. Surface mail was still taking around three months. He writes back –

“Things seem to be wakening up a bit at home according to the odd scraps of news we get now and again.”

He’s referring to Luftwaffe and RAF bombing raids of Britain and the Continent.

“I heard they had a pretty strong raid on France too not so long ago. I hope they make a right strong one by the time this letter gets to you and stay there. We ought to be pretty well equipped all over after nearly three years of preparation. The air force seems to be by the look of it and the army is not much good without air support. The Russians are still doing fairly well I think. Well they can afford to lose plenty of men. They have plenty to draw on. At present I am along with a lot of Englishmen. Some of them are all right but some are not. The best lot I came across were the ones I trained with who came from infantry regiments. The RAC ones have a lot of well to do ones – civil servants and so on and I don’t fancy them. There is one with me now who talks lah-de-dah like a toff. He thinks and always likes to tell everybody who have no other option but to listen that Churchill has never done anything worthwhile since he became prime minister. He calls himself a communist but hasn’t the brain to be anything other than a windbag. He has had a pretty easy time by the look of it. A good walloping would do him the world of good. Of course they aren’t all like that but there are quite a lot of them I dislike and despise. One of the blokes from the Seaforths (there are only three of us here now) is fed up with them too. He is on a lorry with other two. The Gerry used to say the English man was decadent. A lot of them are. In another twenty years or so by the look of the better class it may be the best of the whole lot are the ordinary working man.”

He’s again frustrated by the army censoring so much of what he wants to write but understands it’s concern that letters will fall into Gerry’s hands, revealing military positions. He asks about home and mentions that he recently wrote to his Granny (like most of the letters this one has not survived). Again the hot African weather is mentioned necessitating them changing into shorts instead of the battledress they had been in on landing in the cool season.

“I don’t think they have the right idea of the east at home. It’s a lot different from what is talked about it – waving palms and all the rest – there are some but the most of the waving palms belong to the nippers shouting ‘“Baksheesh George. Give it”’ they are always trying to cadge something off you, money or cigarettes. They are awful bargainers too. I bought a wallet with stamped leather designs from one of the kids. He wanted 15 ackers for it about three bob. I offered two. He muttered something in Arabic and came down to 10. I offered three and he came down to eight at last I got it for four and a cigarette. The whole deal took about half an hour and I still think I was robbed.”

The 8^th Army had nearly 850 tanks in the region, nearly 200 planes and 100,000 men protected by the Gazala Line – a huge minefield that extended for 43 miles inland from the coast. John’s 3^rd battalion were involved in the near non-stop action.  Assumptions were made by the British command about German tactics. They got it wrong. Rommel launched an attack on 26 May 1942 (John’s sister Margaret’s 26^th birthday). Both sides struggled with inadequate supplies for their troops but Germany’s tanks and air defences proved superior to those of the British and Rommel’s Panzer division pressed forward finally penetrating British positions and securing supply lines to consolidate German’s grip on the region. A British counter attack was launched on the 1^st and 2^nd of June amidst severe desert sand storms but the British action was repulsed by the Germans resulting in the destruction of many tanks, their crews killed, injured or captured as POWs. On 5th June Operation Aberdeen went badly wrong with vast losses of British troops and equipment and thousands of men captured.

The war in the desert was reported back in Britain but perhaps not in a way that was recognisable to the men involved. The 4 June edition of Aberdeen Evening Express was upbeat about the progress of the Allies campaign –

“…we have been able to cut off the head of Rommel’s forward positions… at last light on June 2 our armoured forces drove the enemy out of Tamar… The enemy are known to have lost at least fourteen tanks in this engagement.”

No mention of Allied tank losses which were huge. And on 11 June 1942 the same newspaper had this to say –

“…there are many more around who, though not yet shouting, are supremely confident of the final result.”

On 16th June optimistic propaganda exploded into bombastic hyperbole with embedded war correspondents describing British convoy commanders

“…sitting up aloft on their trucks like sunburned gods – their sun compasses pointing a black sliver of shadow towards the Boche”

 Aberdeen Press and Journal 16 June.

Towards the end of the month the British press was still painting a positive picture of the desert campaign –

“It is these battle groups which are enabling strong British forces to operate with deadly effect well behind the Axis lines.”

With the surrender of tens of thousands of British-led troops to the Axis powers, Churchill later wrote 

“Defeat is one thing. Disgrace is another.”

Back on the farm it was a bumper summer for barley and oats but unfortunately much of the crops had to be left in the ground because of a scarcity of sacks and transport.

On 14 July 1942 a generic statement was issued to John’s father at the farm from the Cavalry and Royal Armoured Corps. It was misaddressed but he eventually received it.

“I regret to inform you that a report has been received from the War Office to the effect that (No.) ******* (Rank) TPR

(Name) Munro J.

(Regiment) 3^rd Btn. Royal Tank Regiment was posted as “missing” on the 2^nd June 1942 in the Middle East.

The report that he is missing does not necessarily mean that he has been killed, as he may be a prisoner of war or temporarily separated from his regiment.

Official reports that men are prisoners of war take some time to reach this country, and if he has been captured by the enemy it is probable that unofficial news will reach you first. In that case I am to ask you to forward any postcard or letter received at once to this Office, and it will be returned to you as soon as possible.”

John’s disappearance was one of many reported in the press during July 1942 –

“Mr John Munro, farmer, Kinnahaird, Strathpeffer has been officially informed that his son Pte. John Munro R.T.C, is missing.”

The news would have been a devastating blow to the family, one shared by so many in Scotland and countries everywhere. John’s mother must have been beside herself with grief and worry but then one morning she announced to the family “John is safe” for she had dreamt in the night of a baby in a cradle furiously rocking back and fore before slowly steadying and coming to a stop which she interpreted as her son John as the baby in the endangered cradle that stilled with the child safe. She wasn’t to know then but John was the sole survivor of a tank destroyed in battle.

On 2^nd August 1942 a plain postcard was written by John.

“Dear Mam,

I hope you have not had long to wait to learn I was (a) prisoner. You do not need to worry about me. When you reply write c/o Italian Red Cross, Rome. Well I will close now. I am your loving son, John. “

John and his fellow captives from North Africa were transferred to Sicily’s Camp PG 98 Prigione di Guerra (Prison of War) under a prisoner agreement between the two fascist governments of Germany and Italy. Prisoners were stripped, deloused, their heads shaved then allocated a tent with about fifty others. The camp in a mountainous area was cold, wet and windy and difficult to escape from. Food consisted of tiny rations of bread, cheese, pasta or rice at best -a handful of berries at worst. There were high levels of sickness, diarrhoea, dysentery and vomiting due to the filthy conditions and near starvation rations. I don’t know if John tried to escape while in Italy. He did break out of camps on several occasions, possibly in Germany where in the earlier stages of the war failed escapees were questioned and returned to camp and perhaps put in solitary confinement for a few days (towards the end of the war they were often shot dead), but in Italy a recaptured POW might be tethered to a flagpole and left for days without food. For many of the very sick Italy was the end of their journey. Surviving POWs such as John were further transferred into Germany. There camps were well protected with trip wires around the perimeter and backed by double barbed wire fences topped with coiled barbed wire, perimeter towers with armed guards and regular foot patrols of camp guards.

There were short rations, too, for farm stock back in Scotland because so little winter feeding was available. Less fertile land was ploughed as an attempt to grow more food instead of relying on foreign imports that tied up vessels and cost mariners’ lives.

John Munro’s War: Part 2 – 1941

By February 1941 Germany’s Afrika Korps commander, Major General Rommel, had landed a force at the Libyan capital of Tripoli in support of the Italians who were struggling to contain the British. Rommel’s tank companies proved a formidable enemy and within a matter of weeks British forces had retreated to the Egyptian border. 

Far from the heat of war in the Western Desert Scotland was suffering severe winter weather during which many of the farm’s lambs died of exposure to the extreme conditions. Grass sickness stopped the breeding of horses on the farm and the numbers of their working horse fell with some of the tasks previously undertaken by horses transferred to a paraffin-fuelled tractor.

John’s uncle, Duncan MacRae, awarded the Military Medal for bravery in the First World War, and grieve (foreman) on the farm during the Second lived with his family in one of the farm cottages close to the steading. In addition to firewood and farm produced food such as oats and potatoes, eggs etc he was paid £11. 10s a month in 1941. The farm employed five other men – for example cattleman Frank McLeod who received £105 a year and others whose wages ranged between 48 shillings and 54 shillings per week. John’s young brother, Roy, was paid between £7 and £13 per month, dependent on hours. John’s sister, Margaret, when not away working as a nanny earned the occasional £7 or £8 at busy times.

John’s father’s farm diaries rarely include any references to family events but on 3^rd December 1941 he noted –

“John sailed. Cable sent from Glasgow – 2^nd Feb about 9 weeks at sea.”

John had been transferred from the Seaforths to the newly formed Royal Armoured Corps, a tank corps that replaced the old horse cavalry regiments. In April 1939 the Royal Tank Corps had been  renamed the Royal Tank Regiment, part of the RAC.  John was recruited into the Reconnaissance Corps which was setup in January 1941, to carry out reconnaissance – scouting ahead of infantry divisions before they advanced – and disbanded in 1946. Recruits into this corps were selected through an intelligence test before being trained as drivers, wireless operators, mechanics and assault infantrymen. Many failed the test and were sent back to their own units. During World War 2 the Reconnaissance Corps served in the Middle East, East Africa, North Africa and the Far East.

During 1941 B battalion 3 RTR were in Greece fighting Italians but I have no evidence John was stationed there although some family members believe he was in Crete where fighting had spread from mainland Greece. Both were terrible bloody encounters and defeats for the Allies despite Britain’s determination to hold Crete which was regarded as essential to British interests as a vital refuelling base in the eastern Mediterranean since 1940. (The first reference John makes to being with the RTR is the following February).

The 3^rd December 1941 is the date on the first of John’s letters I have.

Dear Mam,

We are safely aboard at last. I’m afraid the paper you was sending on is a bit late now. Well it will be sent on later I suppose. We had a sing-song last night and we had a fairly early reveille this morning. Has Roy got busy pushing the pram yet. He can hitch it behind the motor bike he was to get. They will all be settled down for the winter now at home at the neeps. This letter may take some time on arriving as it will be censored and perhaps kept back for a while. Well I am afraid I cannot say much more.

I am your loving son John.

I don’t associate John with sing-songs as the John who returned from war was quite reserved but at twenty and surrounded by comrades he comes across as carefree and with a keen sense of humour. Roy was his young brother and the pram reference is to their sister Chris’ recent baby. Neeps are swedes and it’s clear John is thinking about the life he left at home on the farm.  

Just over two weeks later John writes home again, he’s contemplating the turn into the new year of 1942 but otherwise has little to say partly because of the army’s strict censorship rules, though he does hint at where he currently is –

“I can’t say where I am but it’s hot enough anyway. I have hardly anything on but I am sweating like a pig. We may not be here long and I think it may be a lot hotter yet.”

John Munro’s War: Part 1 1939-1940

This is a partial record of one man’s war divided into seven parts.

Part 1

Thursday 10 May 1945. A postcard written in pencil.

“Rested here overnight when making our way back to the American lines from near Dresden.”

Here being Lederan in Gasten Chemnitz in eastern Germany. The picture postcard was written by 24-year-old John Munro and it appears he was accompanied by several others: Tom and John Whitehead, Chris Simmons, Norrie Thompson, Bill McKay. C. Simmons, Tom S Whitehead who have added their signatures to the reverse of the card – all survivors of the Nazi work camp, Stalag IV-A. On the defeat of Germany that May the camp guards simply abandoned their posts and left the gates open as they hurried away. 

Eastern Germany around Chemnitz was a centre of war-time industries producing military hardware so became a focus of allied bombing aimed at disrupting production and destroying German lines of communication in the east of the country. Some forty miles away was the famously beautiful and culturally important city of Dresden which had escaped direct attack while bombs targeted the region’s manufacturing sector but on the night of 13^th/14^th February Operation Thunderclap changed that when Dresden became the prime target for one of the most controversial Allies’ decisions of the war. The Soviet army approaching from the east and their allies, the British and Americans, were keen to create confusion to prevent German concentration of power in the region and possible resurgence of strength. Punishing the German people was also somewhere in the mix and a curiosity over the effectiveness of firestorm in conflict. As well as Dresden’s own citizens thousands of refugees were also passing through the city (fleeing from approaching Soviet troops), and prisoners of war (POWs) – one of them the American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, later wrote about the terrible scenes he witnessed in his novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. He was one of a number of POWs put to work recovering the tens of thousands of bodies of people who had been burned to death or suffocated in the firestorm that engulfed Dresden when Allied aircraft dropped tons of incendiary bombs on its civilian population. The following night Chemnitz was the target.

Prisoners at Stalag IV-A camp would have been well aware of the increasing assaults on the cities of eastern Germany from the flames that leapt into the sky and, presumably, been given hope that the end of the war was close. At the same time allied bombardments created interruptions to food supplies and Red Cross parcels were stolen more than was usual. Camp guards as well as prisoners were near starving and by early May with the Red Army progressing across country guards abandoned their posts and left the camp gates open. By 8^th May 1945 Chemnitz was occupied by Soviet troops.

C. Simmons and Tom S. Whitehead jotted down their names on a scrap of map of the Freiberg region that John Munro took home with him. Did they use maps to find their way across country after liberation? Possibly.

*

John Munro came from Ross and Cromarty in Scotland where his parents were farmers just north of Inverness. As a farmer John would have been exempted from military service at the beginning of the war but he was barely 18 and headstrong so he enlisted as a private in the Seaforth Highlanders at Strathpeffer without telling his parents four months before conscription was introduced in 1939.

1939

There must have been a lot of talk about war around the Munro kitchen table that May. While to some the country north of Inverness might suggest an idyll of out-of-the-way peace it was far from it – nearby Strathpeffer, Jamestown, Achterneed, the Heights, Blairninich became centres of military activity throughout the war and were restricted areas which meant travel passes were required for everyone, locals included. Private homes as well as hotels and public buildings were commandeered by the military – officers setting themselves up in the smartest of houses – other ranks were accommodated as available and the overflow put up in camps of wooden huts and tents. Land was allocated for military training – rifle and shelling ranges. People came in from across the UK and the world: Newfoundlander and Honduran foresters brought to Scotland to boost the country’s forestry workers (lumberjacks and lumberjills), to provide essential timber supplies for building, aircraft, shipping, mining, telegraph poles and so on. Immediately west of the Munro’s farm practice trenches were dug out on either side of the Black Water, the river that ran through their land. To assist the professionals, locals either too old or in reserve occupations, were able to provide back-up and feel they were contributing to the defence of the country through participation in the Home Guard. John’s father signed up with them and was issued with a pair of boots of different sizes. I expect another volunteer had a similar pair.

On the eve of a war that would transform so much of British life resonances of the past endured. Horses were important means of working muscle. On John’s family’s farm there were 5 working horses plus 2 young ones and a foal that summer of ’39, along with a Shetland pony that was taken as a mascot by one of the military units, likely the Lovat Scouts or Seaforth Highlanders. Horse numbers were decreasing with the advent of the tractor. Just a year or two earlier no fewer than 11 horses were being worked on the family farm. The horses all had names and some of the cattle (mainly Highland and Galloway) on this mixed farm – big cow, broken horned cow, teen, Bonnie, Captain Smith’s, old red cow, old blue cow, roan dairy cow, little red cow. Flocks of sheep were predominantly Cheviots and Leicesters. There were also 140 hens, 30 ducks and 25 turkeys – for people used to eat turkey eggs back then. And crops that included oats, barley, swedes and potatoes.

At just 18, John was surely regarded by his father as a permanent member of the farm’s workforce which he hadn’t expected to lose. As a farmhand John was paid the average wage for a male farm servant of £4 per week (housing and perks were provided on top of basic pay) and £3 for women. That May he received £15 for three weeks work before he left for military service. John’s father, always very involved in local affairs, assisted in assessing damage to Strathpeffer’s Kinettas grass parks and Kinnellan Avenue by Lovat Scouts – broken verges, fences, abandoned water troughs for their horses and general rubbish from their camp.

1940

North Africa became a main theatre of war between Allied and Axis powers over that essential trade route, the Suez Canal. At the outbreak of war the canal was controlled by the British who depended upon it for oil supplies from the Persian Gulf and it became a target for the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. In June 1940 Italy declared war on Britian and France and in September Italian troops invaded Egypt from Libya which had been colonised by Italy in 1911. 

John had swapped working as a farmer for working as a soldier. He earned a soldier’s pay now and paid income tax the same as he would have at home. He would be liable for income tax throughout his time at war, as a prisoner of war. Had he been wealthy or an officer he could have claimed tax relief on investments held outside the UK curiously enough.

Avoch – women carrying men on their backs, the Spanish Armada, Scottish Wars of Independence – and so much more

Avoch was famous back in 1951. In its quest for curiosities to entertain the public the BBC broadcast a radio programme about this Black Isle village on the Moray Firth. So, what was so interesting about wee Avoch? First of all, its name which trips up many an unwary tourist. Avoch is pronounced as Och (as in loch not couch) and is thought to be a corruption of the Gaelic word Abhach meaning mouth of the stream (the Killen burn). If this is correct then Avoch might once have been pronounced Avach for the letters bh together make the sound v in Gaelic, as in Beinn a’ Bhuird. But it isn’t, certainly not now and the v is silent as in Milngavie. A very long time ago my uncle, a soft southerner, was driving through the village when he stopped to ask where he was. “Och” came a helpful reply. “Och, aye,” replied my uncle, “but where is this?” It amused him, and possibly the Auchie.

Once it got beyond the village’s name BBC listeners heard that Avoch’s roots, or some of them, could be traced back to England’s war with Spain in the sixteenth century when scores of vessels from the Spanish Armada were wrecked in Scottish waters while trying to evade England’s navy. One of those Spanish ships foundered off the coast near Avoch in 1588 and because it would have been hazardous for survivors to try to return to their homeland some Spaniards settled in the area marrying local women. This international population was later supplemented in the 19^th century by more unfortunate folk when fellow-Scots were driven out of their homes and off their land during the Clearances, forcing them to adapt to a very different way of life on the coast, as fishers.  

Given the amount of different folk settling here it might have struck 1951 wireless listeners as odd that the majority of Avoch dollies – yes, that’s their nickname – shared just three last names: Patience, Jack and MacLeman. Rival football teams could comprise either all Patiences or all Jacks. With so many folk sharing the same name in such a small community a practical solution to identity confusion meant additional names were given – nicknames or tee-names or by-names. Tee-names might relate to someone’s job, the name of their boat, in much the same way as farmers are known as, for example, John farm name, or their physical appearance and so on.  

Avoch dollies – let me try to sort this one out. Dollies has nothing to do with dolls but is an old Scots word (also dowy or dowie) for someone who is melancholy or full of woe and fisherfolk with their hazardous occupation might sometimes fit that description. Where were we? Ah, dollies and names had an easy/uneasy relationship. Despite the village’s reputation for comprising just Jacks, Patiences and MacLemans there were hundreds of people in Avoch and its surrounding district with different names – a lot of Mackenzies because of the Clearances. One famous son left the village as plain James Jack and returned years later as a wealthy Liverpool merchant and big noise around Avoch, as James Fletcher. He purchased a large and lovely piece of land just west of the village called Rosehaugh (its name came from the little sweet scented wild Scottish rose, the Burnet, that flourished there).

Not all had smelled as sweet as the Burnet rose in Avoch. During the 1800s the Fishery Boards Supervision Inspectorate reported –

“The effect of the present arrangement is that the village of Avoch, from having been one of the most slovenly and filthy, has now been transformed into one of the most tidy and clean fishing villages to be found anywhere. . . Instead of dirty lanes, tenanted by pigs – instead of dung-pits, dung-heaps, and scattered domestic refuse, ashes &c., being found throughout the village, every lane and street will be found to be in good condition, and clean and free from all these things.”

Transforming the village must have been achieved by sheer hard slog, something the folk of Avoch were familiar with. Not that hard work always pays off. It wasn’t only in Ireland that the failure of the potato harvests resulted in terrible suffering. Scots underwent awful hardships in the mid-19^th century when blight destroyed the potato harvest. In Avoch in 1847 emergency measures were put in place to create what today would be called a foodbank except back then those starving had to pay for the emergency supplies of basic essentials, oatmeal and barleymeal. Help came in that prices were controlled and no meal was allowed to be exported from the district until those in desperate need had bought up enough to prevent their starvation.

Arguably the most famous person associated with Avoch is Andrew Murray. No, not that one – Andrew de Moray of Ormond Castle raised a force of fighting men at Avoch during the First Scottish War of Independence, as the Scottish army’s northern leader with William Wallace the campaign leader in the south. Moray was badly wounded at the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297 and died later that year as a result. His castle was destroyed several centuries later during another English invasion, when Cromwell’s forces pulled it down, transporting the stone to Inverness to reinforce the castle there where the invaders were ensconced.  Another contender for its most famous inhabitant is Sir Alexander Mackenzie of Avoch. Born in Stornoway this explorer became the first European to cross North America while searching for a route to the Pacific Ocean, an achievement recognised in the naming of the Mackenzie River. He returned to Scotland and at the age of 48 married a wealthy 14-year-old heiress to the Avoch estate, Geddes Mackenzie and a few short years later was buried at Avoch.

Gaelic was widely spoken around Avoch though not so much within the village where English predominated, as might be expected since it and not Gaelic were taught in schools in the drive to anglicise Scotland. Boys were also taught Greek, Latin, arithmetic, book-keeping and reflecting Avoch’s predominant occupation, navigation. Church music was taught for a time but disappeared from schools by the middle of the 19^th century. On the other hand, by this time bibles were as common then as they had been scarce a hundred years earlier when barely one could be found in Avoch.

While English was widely spoken in the locality each of the villages of the Black Isle had their own distinctive dialect and vocabulary. Avoch English was combined with distinctly Avoch vocabulary.  Words such as kyout for child, damiki for a girl, schielickie for a boy, leam for a food plate and prunnels were crumbs that might be left on a leam. Damiki is easily understood as women were often referred to as dames in the Highlands and adding a diminutive such as iki gives damiki in the same vein as a wee lamb (and small child) was a lamiki when I was growing up in the Black Isle.

Avochies were also very superstitious as I think all fishing communities tended to be because of the hazards of life at sea. No point in taking chances. For example, they regarded anyone called Ross as unlucky which in a district of Ross and Cromarty must have given a complex to quite a number of innocent souls. Rosses were lumped in with pigs and rabbits as kaulironies or caul iron(cold iron) and if an Avochie stumbled across anyone or anything they suspected was an ill-omen an item of cold iron had to be found to touch to cancel misfortune – in much the same way as folk cross their fingers when walking under a ladder – and who can blame them for in June 1871 fourteen died, including many women. Early one morning a small boat packed with men and women pushed away from the shore to prepare a catch for selling in Inverness which had been stored overnight in a fishing boat anchored just offshore.  A sudden stiff breeze swept the boat out into the firth creating panic. In no time it capsized throwing everyone into the sea. The catastrophe that left a large number of children motherless could be seen happening from the village.   

But Avoch was not solely a fishing village. Crofting was the mainstay of most Black Islers. From the land came food other than fish as well as wool. Local wool was prepared and woven into cloth and tweed for a time. Everything grown and manufactured that wasn’t consumed locally was exported. Linen was another crop grown around Avoch which had its own lint mill. Avoch hemp was manufactured into rope and canvas which provided sails for Moray Firth boats. But for the majority in Avoch the sea provided their income with hundreds employed directly or indirectly – sometimes without caution. For example once bountiful oyster beds were destroyed by overfishing. Catches of sprats, herring, salmon, whiting and haddock were sold around the Black Isle by wives and daughters of fishermen and in Inverness’s markets.

Age and infirmity were no barriers to work. As there were no old age pensions until the 20^th century if you didn’t work you didn’t eat. The elderly and sick were forced to work their entire lives changing from what had been their occupation to easier and more menial tasks such as making and baiting fishing hooks and mending fishing nets. This didn’t mean the community did not pull together to provide extra assistance when needed such as when fishermen were lost at sea and their widows and children found themselves without their main breadwinner. This happened in 1792 following the loss of several fishers including the husband of a nineteen-year-old lassie, pregnant with her first baby who also lost her father and brother in the same accident. As well as receiving help from her fellow-villagers money flooded in from miles around; from Nairn to Fort George.  

Only the wealthy escaped a lifetime of unrelenting back-breaking toil but all work and no play make Jacks a bunch of dull boys, to misquote the proverb. Play included village football and another ball game enjoyed over Hogmanay which involved carrying a four-pound ball for some distance before seeing who could chuck it farthest. Whether women and girls participated I’ve no idea but don’t run away with the idea that ordeals of strength were confined to the male sex. Avoch’s women were renowned for being robust and hardy souls. It was a village custom for wives to carry their men on their backs out to their boats to keep the fishermen’s boots and clothing dry before setting out to sea. And in common with fisherwomen all around Scotland, Avoch women shouldered very heavy baskets packed with wet fish for miles across country when selling catches at inland farms and cottages.

So there you have it – Avoch distilled. The village of three family names – Patience, Jack and MacLeman – those names have been taken across the world. It is astonishing the number of folk with the name Patience who live in Africa; the British Empire was a vehicle for more than wars and trade. Patience sometimes said to derive from England or France may also be traced to the Gaelic Páidín – a diminutive of Pádraig. Jacks there are in plenty. Several notorious. MacLeman or McLeman and innumerable variations certainly has roots in Ireland. One man whose name incorporated both Jack and a variation of McLeman was the late actor, Jack Lemon, whose family were Irish. And the only thing to beat that for being cool is that there is a font called MacLemon.

None of this has much to do with Avoch and I’ll end with something else that’s only tangentially connected with Avoch but a good story. Around the turn of the 20^th century Avoch was on the circuit for a sheriff called Thoms. The poor man had issues, as they say. I don’t know what she served up to him but Sheriff Thoms insisted on giving his Avoch cook cooking lessons when he stayed in the village. Neither do I know if he travelled with his pet cat – the one he fined up to a penny for misbehaving. Thoms was a celebrated flirt but perversely he kept unpleasant smelling camphor in what he referred to as his laughing waistcoat to deter women who might take his advances seriously. And finally, he arranged that he be buried in a wicker coffin so that when Christ returned to earth at the resurrection, he would be ready for a fast escape to beat the crowd to witness it – but then he changed his mind, deciding to be cremated instead and his ashes kept in the ladies’ room in St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. And on that note, perhaps it’s time to stop.

I can scarcely remember my grandmother’s voice

I can scarcely remember my grandmother’s voice – neither of my grandmothers’ voices. Like everyone I had two grannies and in my case both my grannies are now long dead for they were born into a different world, in the late 1900s. I like having that link, however tenuous, with a Scotland that’s gone forever.

My paternal Granny, Harriet (Hetty), was a strong woman, and tall as befits a McHardy from Braemar. In common with lots of folk I didn’t take much interest in either of my grannies lives but filed away in my subconscious were the odd name and incident and these aided and abetted by a few photographs and internet access to census returns, marriage, birth and death certificates have meant I’m able to better place my grannies into their family settings preceding the years I knew them. A wee bit, at least.

Top row: Harriet as a child with her parents at Braemar; at home in Aberdeen, early 1930s; a day out on Deeside with Granda and dog Glen; McHardys at home at Tomintoul, Braemar late 1920s. Bottom row: Harriet with daughter Hetty on Union Street in Aberdeen, 1920s; at home in the 1950s; Braemar pipe band rehearsing; McHardys at the croft on Morrone

Harriet, let’s call her Granny 1, was born on the humble croft her parents worked on the slopes of Morrone, a hill behind Braemar. A bit lower than a Munro, Morrone is a Corbett, which means it’s between 2,500 ft and 3,000ft – an unlikely place to try to farm but somehow a community of five households did just that and they called their wee fermtoun, Tomintoul. This is a different Tomintoul from the well-known village of that name. The McHardys worked 7 acres of this the most elevated cultivated land in the whole of Scotland so it must have surprised a few people that in 1864 Braemar’s Tomintoul had the unlikely distinction of producing the country’s biggest golden yellow turnip – thirty-three inches in circumference and weighing in at a whopping 14 lbs – some achievement for land tilled from under heather, trees and boulders though as far as I know it had nothing to do with my family. For the area to sustain five families would have taken immense effort in clearing a stretch of the hillside of its heather, trees and boulders and neutralising its acid soil – they did this with lime produced from limestone in communal lime kilns. Life on Morrone would have been idyllic in spring, summer and autumn but a mighty struggle to survive in during winter in what is one of the coldest areas of Scotland. Granny’s children – my dad, aunty and uncle – spent childhood holidays on the old croft and retained strong attachment to the area. My husband and I climbed up Morrone one fine summer’s day and were astonished to discover my dad who had driven out to Braemar with us, and was then about seventy and in poor health, struggling up behind us. He made it up that purple remembered hill he’d scampered over all those decades earlier – made it up one last time.

The Tomintoul crofters were poor folk so that everyone had to do their bit. The young tended to go into service – girls became cooks or house servants while boys found work on the big estates of Balmoral and Invercauld or went into a trade. When no local jobs were available the connections made through these landed estates opened up jobs elsewhere in the UK. Granny became a cook to a wealthy London family and on her return to Scotland she cooked for a family in Stonehaven. One of her older sisters, Hellen, became the lifelong companion of ‘a lady’, a Miss Poole from Shepton Mallet, and the two young women travelled extensively abroad and in the UK. When Miss Poole died, as an old woman, the also elderly Hellen returned to Scotland, to Aberdeen near to Granny and the rest of her family.   

Census at Tomintoul, Braemar, 1881

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First there were two world wars to contend with. My grandfather, Granny’s young husband, joined the Royal Army Medical Corps (I have his notebooks from that time in which he scribbled down treatments for everything from shell shock to chilblains along with his wallet containing baby teeth from his children back home). I can only imagine the anxiety Granny suffered during the long years of the Great War guessing what her husband was enduring for he was a stretcher bearer in some of the worst fighting at the Battle of the Somme. But he survived it all. They lived in a tiny tenement flat in Skene Street in Aberdeen until the 1930s when bungalows were built on the west side of the town, off Mid-Stocket Road. It’s a mystery how they afforded to buy one but buy one they did and it remained in the family for over seventy years, nearly unchanged in all that time. It is in this house that I remember the only word spoken by Granny – whenever we arrived on holiday (when I was a bairn) she would pick me up to gauge how much heavier I’d got since our last meeting and call me Tina. I was Tina to no-one else but her. One word isn’t much of a vocal memory but there is a phrase that became something of a family legend though I can’t claim to have heard Granny speak it since I hadn’t then been born. It was during World War 2 when Granny expressed her resistance to the Nazis as the German Luftwaffe flew over Aberdeen dropping their bombs on the city, she’d be out the backdoor shaking a fist at them and shouting defiantly,

“Awa ye buggers!”

I think I take after Granny. Now I can’t claim to have heard her then but I recognise that spirit that stayed with her through her latter years. I don’t know what else Granny was doing through the war while her sons were abroad on military service and her daughter fulfilling her civic duty alerting Aberdonians to air raids but she appears to have made a point of stocking up on food for more than thirty years after her death we found tins of wartime food stored in her cellar. Unopened.

Unusually, my grandmother was ten years older than her husband, my Granda, and considerably taller, but for all their unconventionality theirs was a long, and as far as I am aware, a happy marriage that began in 1911 when my grandfather returned from a spell working in New York to marry his Hetty. He was 21 and she 31 and they had met when he was working as a young baker in Braemar.

Granny was a woman of her time – such a silly phrase as everyone is. She wore her skirts long, often to her ankles, over red flannel petticoats. The beautiful costumes I found in her wardrobe may not have been hers but her sister Hellen’s (though I don’t know for sure).

Harriet as a young woman and with some clothes found in her wardrobe

It is a pity photographs are silent. Sometimes it is a pity. Granny’s voice will always remain in my imagination, an odd word captured in a rather high-pitched, thin, reedy tone and a smile behind each one. If only I could capture more of them.

***

My other granny, my maternal granny (Granny 2), has also been more or less silenced since death. She was about ten years younger than Granny 1 and was also a daughter of a crofting family but hers lived in the Black Isle which enjoys one of the mildest climates in Scotland. A Highlander from Cromarty, Granny 2 was Isabella (Bella), a Miller (sometimes Millar) whose extended family included the geologist Hugh Miller. Like Granny I, Granny 2 was tallish but otherwise they were very different types of women. For one thing, Granny 2 would never have thought of much less uttered Granny 1’s immortal commands to the Luftwaffe.

While not being able to very clearly recall Granny 2’s voice I should because when she was old and had succembed to dementia she would near-endlessly recite rhymes remembered from her childhood or those she shared with her own children. “Here we go round the mulberry bush was often shortened to “on a cold a frosty morning” recited with gusto, as our daughter remembers. “Losh, losh” she’d repeat over and over again – losh being a Scots word for surprise though Granny didn’t say it with any sense of its meaning but more a lament, for what I can only wonder. It was a sad end to her life, drawn out over many years – she seated day-long with nothing to occupy her mind and slipping inevitably into a world of her own, living with her family but separately.

I imagine because I wasn’t there the night she called out in her sleep for her recently dead husband – “John!” was uttered urgently but softly in that light way people with the Gaelic have of talking with a soft palate so that words trickle from the front of the mouth. Bella’s vocabulary was well sprinkled with the Gaelic though she disdained Scots for her generation were encouraged to be ashamed of their own traditional language. A generation before young Bella was born her family were cleared (a polite term for being driven off their land) from Strathconon and ended up in the Black Isle and it was instilled into the people that progress equalled English and backwardness equalled Scots. So Bella venerated the English language and I recall her urging me to say ‘yes’ instead of ‘aye’ – but I cannot remember how she said it.

Bella’s wedding at the Glenalbyn Hotel in Inverness in 1912. Bella and her husband John are surrounded by family and friends – Bella’s sisters on her right. John’s father is the exhausted-looking man with beard fourth left of Bella. He died in 1914, the year following the death of one of his sons of blackwater fever in Mozambique. I don’t know if his son, Rod, is in the picture.

For all that she was a kind and gentle woman, more stoic than her appearance might suggest, encouraging her young farmer husband to take the plunge and rent a bigger farm and in time buy it. They were a team. In common with all farmers’ wives, Bella was responsible for some farm work as well as her domestic duties – eggs and dairy products which she sold at markets each week loading loading eggs, cheese, butter and cream onto the trap and driving the horse the twenty or so miles to Inverness for the weekly market – and presumably Dingwall and Muir of Ord, too.

She and my grandfather married in 1912. Like my Aberdeen grandparents they were 21 and 31 but unlike them the bride was younger than her husband. Unlike Harriet’s husband, Bella’s man was not active abroad during the Great War as farming was a reserved occupation and he had carried out pre-war training in England when he was introduced to the joys of motorcycling but couldn’t work out how to stop his bike so drove round and round the compound until it ran out of fuel. Family members who were at the front included Granny’s cousin whose letters from the trenches are shown here. Many Scottish women were forced to give up their jobs to travel to England to manufacture munitions during the Great War. Bella’s sister, Anne, was one of them conscripted by the government but she was allowed home towards the end of the war to take care of Bella and her children who were suffering from the deadly Spanish ‘flu of 1918. They all survived.

Top row: Bella as a young woman; Bella seated left with family including her mother at Rosemarkie beach in 1923; Bella with mother, daughter and granddaughter c. 1941; in her garden in 1971. Bottom row: Bella at home c.1961; air mail letter for German prisoners of war; on pillion of her younger son’s motorcycle c.1946.

Bella had a passion for auctions or maybe it was a passion driven by necessity. She and John moved into their final home and farm near Strathpeffer in the 1920s and the rambling old farmhouse took a lot of filling. Bella furnished it with all sorts of weird and wonderful pieces purchased from the Dingwall mart, including a large glass display case of stuffed birds I spent so much time staring at as a young child. The house was a magical playground for us children with more than fourteen rooms plus bathrooms. There was a pantry where Granny’s home-made jams, jellies, chutneys and wine (lethal) were stored, a laundry with an enormous timber sink and a dairy where Granny turned the farm’s milk into the butter, cream and cheese she sold at markets. The dairy was always cold irrespective of the heat outside for it was built as a short wing lit by a series of small windows along a single wall shielded from direct sunlight. A row of meat safes and metal presses sat on long wide shelves to keep food cool and insect free. A large room with ample space for food on one side while the other was stacked with decades worth of Ross-shire Journals and editions of the Scotsman. And now I cannot access Ross-shires of that time. I could write a whole blog on the different rooms, some grand and others basic and functional but the lovely building that was always open house to so many in the area, friends, family, visitors and strangers alike was mysteriously destroyed by fire shortly after the farm was sold.

Bella was said to have had the second sight, based on a single incident I believe. The second sight is a phenomenon some believe occurs when someone ‘sees’ an event happening either in some distant place or in the future. In Granny’s case her experience came during World War Two. Her young son who’d lied about his age to join the army disappeared in North Africa after his tank was destroyed. The family didn’t know if he was alive or dead. One morning Bella confidently announced that he was safe for she had dreamt of her son as a baby in a cradle that rocked back and fore, quicker and quicker, until it slowed to a stop. Her confidence was well-founded and her son did eventually return home after four years as a prisoner in Nazi labour camps in Germany and Poland.

Letters to Bella from her cousin thanking her for her parcels sent to him in the trenches during WW1 in 1916 and 1917

Both Bella and Hetty grew up at a time shanks’ pony was the most common means of getting around and horse and trap for longer journeys. They lived into the age of motor cars and motor cycles, the replacement of paraffin and town gas with electricity, from a world in which correspondence meant letters and telegrams to one with near instantaneous communication, the wireless and telephone and eventually television. They lived through a century of incredible societal changes. Of devastating world wars and numerous other wars and conflicts and the crumbling of the British empire. It would be wonderful to be able to sit down and talk to them both about the world’s momentous events and little domestic dramas but that’s just idle contemplation. Now it is easy to record grannies in full flow so their voices can accompany those who care about them into the future and that can only be a good thing.

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A Scot in Africa – victim of Blackwater Fever

Who needs Superman when there is Duncan? The coming of hydro power to Scotland

Duncan was a powder monkey, one of a team of tunnel miners, employed to bring electricity to the Highlands, north and west of Dingwall, through an immense hydro-electric scheme of dams, tunnels, lochs and power stations. While working at Strathvaich Duncan had gone into a shed to fetch blasting gear when the box of detonators he was holding blew up in his hand and with it the whole shed.

Duncan MacRae

“That Saturday afternoon in June 1911, Oskar Johansson lost all his fair hair. His left eye was ripped out of its socket by the force of the blast. The right hand was severed at the wrist by a shard of rock.”

As I read Henning Mankell’s The Rock Blaster I was pulled up short at his description of an explosion and injuries to the book’s hero, Oskar Johansson, for they were near identical to those suffered by a relative of mine, Duncan MacRae, in the 1950s in an accident not dissimilar to the one suffered by the fictitious Johansson and it got me thinking that Duncan, Duncie, deserved to have his story told as well.

My problem was that Duncan is long dead, he died back in 1991. And that generation of the family has gone and with them first-hand knowledge of the tragedy that befell Duncan that day at Strathvaich. Memories and anecdotes survive about Duncie, his horrific injuries – his left hand was blown off, he lost his left eye, his right eye was damaged and shards of metal and pieces of wire were lodged in his thigh, face and eyelids. He was supplied with a metal hook in place of his missing hand. He was twenty-nine.

One of my earliest memories as a very young child is watching my aunt, a nurse, using tweezers to pluck bits of metal out of Duncan’s studded face. They stood before the farmhouse kitchen window to capture the best light, Duncan stoic throughout scarcely wincing though the pain must have been excruciating.

The Scottish Highlands mythologised and derided in equal measure; dramatic, romantic scenery or barren wilderness of no use to man or beast. But the Highlands aren’t called highlands for nothing. Mountain ranges that trap winter snow that melts into the burns, rivers, lochans and lochs. And rain that isn’t unknown especially towards the west. Water in large quantities described as a wasted resource that should be exploited to produce electric power – hydro power to provide light and heat to Highlanders dependent on Tilley lamps and open fires.

The Conon Valley hydro scheme was one of several planned during WWII and the baby of Tom Johnston, a Labour MP who became Secretary of State for Scotland under Churchill in 1941. Johnston was determined that electric power would be provided to people in the north of Scotland who had no access to the Grid which he regarded as unfair and a deterrent to the Highlands attracting industry and employment. Not everyone agreed.

Proposal after proposal to produce hydro-electricity there was blocked by the House of Lords. The greatest opposition to electrifying the region came from influential wealthy interests who were well-represented in the Lords – sporting estates and coal mine owners (the latter afraid of competition from hydro-electricity). Some objectors cited the loss of the area’s dramatic scenery since dam construction would involve ripping up glens to create new lochs and dams. Land that remained more or less the same for eons would be filled with concrete and bird and animal habitats lost forever. There was less concern for the few people still living in the glens being forced off land generations of their families had inhabited. 

A Professor Gruffydd (MP) feared the Highlands would be turned into something akin to a –

“Dublin slum. That has already happened in the rural parts of Scotland and in the Lowlands.”

(27 May 1943, House of Commons)

A habitual critic was MP Sir Gerald Nabarro, a crashing bore with a constituency near Birmingham who took every opportunity to rant in the House of Commons about English taxes having to provide a few Highlanders with electricity. Speaking in July 1958 he had the Strathfarrar scheme in his sights –

“This is not a parochial Scottish issue. This is a matter of an expenditure of £14 million by a nationalised industry.”

One of the bees in his bonnet was his insistence that producing electricity by hydro in the Highlands was far costlier than it would be in England (theoretically) – as if England would agree to such monumental changes to its countryside and ecology and had the physical conditions for such schemes.  His complaint that hydro was costlier than coal and nuclear were challenged on grounds that costs of coal and nuclear production kept rising while they fell for hydro power.

In 1958 Conservative and Unionist MP, David Robertson, must have still been wearing his London constituency hat when he switched to Caithness and Sutherland and described the Conon scheme as –

“the unwanted extravagance in the far north”

Supporters of the Conon hydro scheme worried the intended benefits for the Highlands would be diverted south to the central belt to boost industries, incomes and utilities there. This did eventually happen but not before the great hydro venture provided exclusively for the north of Scotland, to the Highlands and islands and the northeast cities of Aberdeen and Dundee.

Under Johnston’s plan the body set up to operate the Conon Hydro scheme, the North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board (NSHEB), was given temporary ownership of sections of rivers running through the region’s three estates and at the completion of the works the majority of fishing rights were transferred to local angling clubs, but fishing rights on the rivers Conon and Blackwater were sold to private owners (though locals did not always bother going through official channels, including at least one serving police officer who was partial to a salmon from the Blackwater). Three landowners held much of the land between Contin and Ullapool: the Lovat estate, the Fairburn Stirlings and Spencer Nairns of Struy.  They were concerned about intrusions onto their land and loss of revenue from fishing and shooting.

With little infrastructure beyond Contin about 160 publicly-funded new roads were constructed so lorries and materials could get into the glens and straths and on completion of the scheme there was a fair amount of anger when some roads were then handed over to the estates as their private property. 

Tom Johnston was always aware that business interests outside the Highlands would be eyeing up the scheme’s potential money-making opportunities so he ensured the NSHEB was independent and had control over its own finances in order that Scottish people and businesses would benefit first and foremost and lucrative contracts would not be picked off by bigger English competitors. In 1943 a bill to bring light to the Highlands eventually made it through parliament. The whole scheme was phased in three parts; each requiring a parliamentary act.

And so crofts, houses, roads, tracks, bridges, burns, plants from trees to tiny flowering species and the insects, birds and animals they provided for were forever lost beneath concrete and water. Six dams at Glascarnoch, Vaich, Luichart, Meig, Torrachilty and Orrin and six power stations at Achanalt, Grudie Bridge, Mossford, Luichart, Orrin and Torrachilty along with new lochs at Fannich and Luichart were built in 350 square miles of Ross-shire. Rivers were diverted. Land was dug out. Land was raised. Millennia of rock blasted out of the earth. Part of the Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh railway line was submerged and rerouted.

Such a huge undertaking required labour. Lots and lots of men and a few women were hired. Many were local – lorries picked men up (including recently demobbed soldiers and former prisoners of war still in the area) from around Strathpeffer, Dingwall, the Black Isle and miles beyond very early in the day and transported them along winding single-track roads to the building sites and start of usually 12-hour shifts, sometimes longer depending on the job that day. Outside work, summer and winter. Labourers flocked in from around Scotland, Ireland and around Europe. The initial involvement of politicians and planners, men in velour-collared coats and Homburg hats, gave way to men in donkey jackets and tackety boots.

Workers who were not local lived in camps that might comprise ex-war Nissan huts or forestry commission cabins previously occupied by Canadian lumberjacks stationed in Scotland during WWII. Through once silent straths and glens save for the cry of eagles and trickle of burns burst the relentless din of industry – explosions, drilling, excavating and hammering.  

Before the coming of the Conon Hydro scheme Duncan ran a mobile shop. His cousin, Don, remembers –

“He had a little Ford van, BGA 555, in which he used to sell fish, fruit and vegetables starting at Brahan P.OW. camp and going up the West Coast nearly up to Ullapool calling at all the crofts along the way. That wee van was an Aladdin’s cave for me. When we stopped to eat, I would have an Arbroath smokie with a choice of Irn Bru or American Creme Soda to wash it down.” 

Don was much younger than Duncan and he recalled getting a hurl to Loch Luichart on the crossbar of Duncan’s bike to poach fish with an ‘otter’ (a sort of wooden kite with baited lines that floated across the water). A few miles beyond Loch Luichart lies Loch Vaich and it’s here Duncan was employed as a ‘powder monkey’ handling explosives to blast a tunnel through the rocky landscape so that water from a dam built at Vaich could flow into Loch Glascarnoch.

The ambitious project succeeded enabling hundreds of thousands of Scots easy access to electricity. Before the Conon complex only 1 out of 14 farms and 1 in 100 crofts had electricity. By the late-fifties the vast majority were linked up. Areas most difficult to connect such as the western isles were provided with calor gas in the interim.

New electricity lines at Elphin on the Ullapool-Inchnadamff road with Cul Beag, Cul Mor and Loch Veyatie behind.
Mrs MacLean hay-making at her croft near Elphin with poles bringing electricity in the background.

One ambition for electrification was it would attract industries to the north but that never really materialised. However, having electricity at the flick of a switch was overwhelmingly welcomed by the majority of people in the north who could largely dispense with paraffin lamps and local industries such as farming and boat building benefitted greatly from the availability of electrical power for operating machinery. 

A decade on from the transformation of the Highlands Tom Johnston’s early concerns remained valid. The nationalised and autonomous North of Scotland Hydro-Electric Board was always under threat but it wasn’t until Thatcher in 1989 that the real damage was done when the Board and its sister in the south of Scotland were privatised as Scottish Hydro Electric plc and Scottish Power plc, freeing these companies to sell their electricity anywhere in the UK – and charge the folk of the straths and glens and everywhere else in Scotland more for their home-produced electricity than consumers of it in the south of England.  And so it has remained to this day.

For his devastating injuries; the loss of one eye, one hand, metal shards embedded into his body, his personal and working life devastated, Duncan received £12,000 not the £15,000 his solicitors sued the civil engineering company Reed and Mallik for. Still, it was a considerable sum in 1958 but for a young man with his whole live in front of him paltry compensation. Duncan was invariably upbeat and smiley, a kind and fun man but he must have suffered terrible torment over what his future could have been.

Duncan’s nephew, Rory, at Tarvie Croft which Duncan rented after his accident

I only managed to find one very brief mention of his pay-out, not the accident itself, in newspapers and couldn’t trace his damages case at Edinburgh’s Court of Session (Common law was altered in an 1958 Act to introduce discretionary powers that would allow courts to include interest on damages awards calculated from a date earlier than the decree). Then something odd happened – the name Macrae began to pop up on my computer screen alongside other compensation cases in Scottish courts – Macrae v Reed and Mallik Ltd 1961 SC 68, 74. Lots of claims for personal injury compensation referred to Duncan’s case, including Tommy Sheridan’s appeal for interest on damages he won from News Group Newspapers in 2018 on grounds the pursuer was being deprived of his money through no fault of his own. Duncan’s solicitors had appealed his compensation but in 1961 the court decided greater discretion should be available to the court over the 1958 judgement leaving pursuers of damages back at square one.   

However, my attempt to obtain access to the court papers have been stymied and I’ve been told the record of Duncan’s case is closed under section 38 of the Freedom of Information Scotland Act. Closed until 2061! I may put in a Freedom of Information request but am not confident that will be any more successful.

Duncan’s future life was tragically blighted by the accident but he was not alone. Many men suffered life changing injuries and several died carrying out their work on the hydro dams to bring electricity into Scottish homes, farms and businesses. With none of the plant machinery available today, the Conon scheme was achieved through hard, exhausting labour, often in freezing weather conditions. Men were crushed, buried, drowned and blown up and most are long forgotten except by their families – these are the men in boiler suits and donkey jackets while those men involved who wore velour collar coats and Homburg hats have their names recorded for posterity.

Duncan

Duncan’s cousin recalled the man he’d loved –

“So you can see how much he meant to me and imagine how I felt about the accident and then how I admired his long battle to get back to normality. Who needs Superman when there is Duncan?”

He describes Duncan as “that fine fellow” who “brought a lot of happiness to a lot of people.” I remember Duncan. He was indeed a fine fellow with a constant smile and his good humour sure did bring happiness to old and young. This blog is for Duncan.

Duncan is buried along with his parents, Dunc and Anne, and brother, Roddy at Contin cemetery

Further reading – The Dam Builders, Power from the Glens by Jim Miller.

Isolation Shepherd by Iain R. Thomson.