The little crofting villages that kept Britain’s WW2 convoys running

Wester Ross was facing an uneventful war. Then disaster struck the Royal Navy... and everything changed overnight

OR THE inhabitants of the tiny crofting communities ofWester Ross, separated by a wall of mountains from the rest of the UK, the dramatic events leading up to the Second World War must have seemed rather far away. But that changed overnight in late 1939 when a remote Scottish sea loch found itself chosen as the location for a new strategic military base with more than 5,000 personnel.

Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, base of the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet, had been compromised when German submarine U-47 penetrated the anchorage and sank the 30,000-ton battleship Royal Oak.

From then on, Atlantic convoys could safely muster and refuel in Loch Ewe. And once Russia became an ally in 1941, the eastern front would be supplied via the Arctic Sea to deliver food, fuel and armaments to Murmansk and Archangel.

The first such convoy sailed from Loch Ewe in February 1942, and the huge influx of men and material brought dramatic changes to the tiny community.

I came across many tales of wartime sacrifice, courage and endurance while researching Loch Ewe, as well as unheard of new experiences, such as film shows and large exuberant dances in the village hall.

Dolly Cameron, the third child in a family of seven, was still at school when war broke out, growing up in Inverasdale on the shores of Loch Ewe, where her father delivered the post.

Royal Engineers and Pioneers were stationed at nearby Firemore to create an infrastructure of roads, camps and defences for the base, and Dolly went to her first film with her brother Hector at their makeshift NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institute) cinema.

Tickets cost sixpence and friendly servicemen obliged by giving the locals lifts there in Army trucks.

“Films were shown at least three times a week, although of course we weren’t allowed to go on a Sunday,” she recalled.

Tina Mackenzie was a little older than Dolly, and found a job in the NAAFI in the nearby village of Aultbea after leaving school. When she was old enough, she joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), civilians providing nursing care for military personnel, and later received a citation for her service in the Home Guard.

One particularly inventive Home Guard officer adapted the handlebars of his bicycle to mount a machine gun in case of invasion.

Dances at the village hall, which had been extended to accommodate servicemen and women, could be very lively affairs. Myra Hook, a member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, recalled: “They were held on Friday nights and on Saturday mornings you would often see a rating marching along with a pane of glass to replace one broken the night before.”

The crofters had long since learned ways of eking out an existence from the land, and this helped supply the military base with food to supplement rations.

Local farms shared milk, cheese, butter and eggs, and fishermen offered up their catch. Bread was baked at Maclean’s bakery and seamen collected loaves there when not enough could be brought in by road from Inverness.

Dolly recalled a type of Madeira cake known as the “yellow peril” because “it was made with very yellow custard powder and no eggs”.

The characters in my new novel set in Loch Ewe might be fictitious but their experiences are based on my research, including one memorable day I was out on the loch (in the driving rain naturally) and found myself in the middle of modern naval manoeuvres, including the firing of blank ammunition. Fortunately, my skipper was a local fisherman and we beat a hasty retreat.

Remains of wartime defences still surround the loch. When you get your eye in,

KEEPING CALM: Fiona with NAAFI van at the Russian Arctic Convoys Museum