On 30 November the Soviet Union invaded Finland with some 450,000 men, the start of what would become known as the ‘Winter War’.

Hetty Munro over on Orkney recorded in her diary on 27 November, “Yesterday there was such a gale of wind and rain that there was absolutely no danger at all of any Jerries coming over so we all sat by the fire most of the day and listened to the wind.”

She also wrote, “On Saturday we heard of the glorious way that the ‘high heid yins’ [i.e., the senior officers] of the Navy fight this war. Outside the Naval Offices in Kirkwall there are cars always waiting and whenever an air raid warning sounds all the Admirals etc. leap into those cars and make for the hills. Isn’t it awful?”

She also noted that the senior officers’ hotel had been prepared for attack, whereas the one she worked in just had a notice to go down to the basement when the gunfire started: “It’s rather a joke that notice because we have no guns that can fire in Stromness and so we just watch the planes going overhead taking photographs of the places of interest. But not so the Senior Service. They just head for the hills.”

A Caithness man came before the Conscientious Objectors’ Tribunal in Edinburgh this week. D.M. Finlayson, who was studying science at St Andrew’s University, “declared that war never accomplished what it set out to do, and that the price was too great.” He went on to say that “he was anxious to play his part in the community apart from the war”, and “He expressed the opinion that people in Czecho-Slovakia to-day were better off than the Polish people.” [Czechoslovakia had been occupied by Germany by March 1939; Poland, of course, had resisted and had suffered military defeat and the bombing of her cities.]

Finally this week, the Nation’s War Savings Campaign was launched, giving people the opportunity to buy defence bonds at 3 per cent and National Savings Certificates free of income tax. As the John o’Groats Journal splendidly put it, “Leaving the Germans meantime to their orgy of lying propaganda and their illegal and barbarous forms of warfare, all of which will be their own undoing in the long run,” Britain had embarked on a War Finance Campaign. People were in effect “lending their savings to the State”, under the slogan, “Lend to Defend”. “We may not be in any of the actual fighting forces, but … we can assist in a manner that is absolutely essential to the successful prosecution of the war.”

Coming soon! Week 14, 4 - 11 December 1939, will be published on Monday 3 December 2012. To view previous issues please use the menus on the right hand side of the page. 

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