Our forgotten defences, hidden in plain sight
Writer and historian Alistair Moffat’s new book guides us along Scotland’s lesserknown highways and byways, reconnecting our national story with our landscape. Here he takes us back to 1940 and Churchill’s plan to save Britain
The path forked unexpectedly. I had no map sufficiently detailed to decide either way. The left fork climbed a gentle slope into a less dense wood while the right stayed on the banks of the Cowie Water. It runs out of the Grampian Mountains and into the sea at Stonehaven. And Winston Churchill’s war cabinet decided in the summer of 1940 that it might be the saving of Britain.
I had come to walk along what the generals called the Cowie Stop Line. When the Germans invaded Norway, it gave them a much longer startline for an invasion of Britain and the beaches of the Moray Firth were thought to be vulnerable. There were fewer than 3,000 soldiers to protect them. Churchill was aghast at the speed and effectiveness of Hitler’s blitzkrieg as divisions of panzers overran Belgium and drove fast and deep into Northern France.
If an invasion force sailed the North Sea, and even if only part of the British mainland had fallen into Nazi hands, the pressure on Churchill to negotiate a cease-fire would have been immense. And so in something approaching panic, shore defences were planned. If the Germans gained a bridgehead in the north, their only easy route south was through the Stonehaven gap and so the pillboxes, concrete cubes and road blocks of the Cowie Stop Line were hurriedly thrown up. I wanted to see what remained.
I reckoned it would be better to take the right fork by the riverbank, where it was more likely I’d see something. However, the path soon ran out and I found myself on a steepening slope made slippery by overnight rain. But being Scottish, and male, I did not
He was amazed when I pointed out the pillbox hidden in the dark wood
do the sensible thing, and ploughed on. The slope began to look more like the sides of a gorge (and a good defence against panzer tanks). Right. The best thing, apart from retracing my muddy steps, of course, was to climb the slope. My backpack was not heavy, only a change of clothes and some sandwiches. Very soon, I found myself mountaineering, grabbing saplings, testing stones to see if they were earthfast, almost falling at least once. By the time I reached the top and the path I should have followed, I was panting, soaked in sweat.
Thank goodness, there was a bench around the next corner. I stripped off my jumper and shirt, and steaming gently, decided to sit for a bit and cool down. I might even enjoy a cheese sandwich. A heartbeat later, two ladies and their dogs came round the corner. “Yes”, said one, “So difficult to know what to wear when it’s so changeable”. My mouth stuffed with sandwich, I nodded.
When I reached the end of my walk, there was no police car waiting. Instead I had discovered a remarkable testament to doggedness in the face of impossible odds. But evidence had all but disappeared. On the south bank of the Cowie the defences were hard to find. Seventyseven years of camouflage had hidden most pillboxes and cubes behind gorse and tangles of undergrowth. Only in two places could I see clearly what all of that frantic effort had achieved.
Near Findlay stone Bridge, a row of mature beech trees had 15 concrete cubes set neatly between them. And at a bridge near Ury House, a pillbox had been tidied up and its owner was the only person I met who knew anything about the stop line. And he was an American. Taxi drivers are usually knowledgeable, but when I asked the man who took me back to my car at Stonehaven to stop at the Findlay stone Bridge, he was amazed when I pointed out the pillbox hidden in the dark wood and the slit trenches beside it. He had driven past it hundreds of times.