The Shetland Bus convoys which smuggled sailors, spies and supplies from Scotland to Norway will be remembered with a North Sea crossing to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day.
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00:00It's a long story but a fascinating story and a story of great bravery and dedication and maybe
00:10foolhardiness at times. How you know locals together with another country they can work
00:15together and they can use local knowledge and manage to overwin a sort of superior enemy if
00:21you like. We have a very close link in the club with Norwegians and it was with that in mind that
00:29a group of us wanted to come up and look at the Shetland Islands, see where the Shetland bus operated
00:37from and remember with pride and gratitude the amazing feats of endurance and courage which
00:45they performed during the war. The 17th of May is Norway's Independence Day and so here we acknowledge
00:54that and lay a wreath. There are 44 names on the memorial to the crewmen who were lost.
01:00It was built using stones taken from the village or the place where each of the crewmen came from
01:07in Norway. This year it will be very busy because we expect between two to three hundred Norwegians
01:13at the wreath laying ceremony. Churchill in 1940 set up what he called his SOE special operations
01:22executive and that was to set up an organization behind enemy lines. Colonel Wilson was the man put
01:29in charge of operations in Norway and he thought maybe he could use the fishing boats here in Shetland
01:36as a means of supplying the resistance. They were obviously disguised as fishing boats but if the Luftwaffe
01:43got too close they could hit a lever and up pop these Lewis guns where a system awaits. If they were
01:50crewed by Norwegians maybe they could infiltrate the coast, land agents, saboteurs, radio operators, supply
01:59all the munitions and very importantly bring back refugees and bring back agents. A lot of the trips
02:07were to Arctic Norway and those trips would take five days and five nights. Remember in the middle of
02:12winter they would only a compass guide them. But in the main there was never an accident caused by poor
02:17navigation so it's quite astonishing just how successful they were. But in 1942 the losses were too heavy.
02:26The crews wanted faster boats and so the Americans came to the rescue and donated three submarine chasers
02:33and from that day on not a single life was lost and they were able to carry out a very efficient
02:40service across the North Sea. It started originally from Lerwick but they very quickly realized that Lerwick
02:47was not a place from which to conduct a secret operation. Lerwick was far too busy. Lerwick probably had
02:54spies so it moved to Lunna and Lunna is in the north east coast of Shetland, the perfect spot for a secret
03:02operation. Just one big house, a very good hankerage appear. When we moved here in 2001 we obviously bought
03:12the house but what we don't own is people's feelings and historical links. We don't own that and we're very
03:18sensitive to when people come here how much it means to them. This room in the wartime was the
03:24Shetland bus office has a good view to west Lerwick and east Lerwick down to the coach road up there.
03:29David Howarth, the sub-lieutenant who was in charge of the day-to-day operations up there, his ashes
03:35are scattered at Lunna and he has a plaque on the wall in the churchyard. They realized after the first
03:42winter that there were problems the boats would come back very often smashed to pieces either
03:49through the Luftwaffe attack or the weather and the one was nearly as bad as the other and they
03:54found it very difficult to repair them at Lunna. Maybe there's a lesser issue there was no sort of
03:59social life for these young men and we have to bear in mind they were all volunteers they were not
04:04enlisted. There was a BBC interview done here in the house with Leif Larsen and he said the biggest
04:09single issue about Lunna was that it is impossible to defend. So it was decided to move here to
04:14Scalloway in 1942. But in Scalloway obviously there was quite a close connection with the local community
04:21so close as four people married locally. And my father had the engineering business here
04:26that they so badly needed so they asked him if he would sort of look after them and he said yes.
04:33And I think it was good for them as well when they came back from missions they had some locals to
04:37talk to. The Norwegians weren't very good in English and obviously the locals in Scalloway didn't speak
04:42much Norwegian but old Jack Moore always recommended the young Norwegians to go and find ourselves a
04:47sleeping dictionary. That was his advice. The overall headquarters were at Kergård,
04:52we used to have Flemington they called the house. I think the really important agents they used to come and
04:58stay with us in our home at Kergård and all the VIPs coming up from London or up from Scarpa Flow.
05:07My father really just came to support Mitchell and then Mitchell was promoted and at that point
05:12my father was to his own surprise I think really asked to take command of the operation. But my mother
05:18was also in SOE so they were both sort of in the racket together. Of course at the time they never called him
05:25Sclater because he had a cover name Rogers. After his brother's dog who'd had a fight with his dog
05:31earlier that morning so that's the reason and I lived my first four or five years yeah at Kergård.
05:39Blissfully happy childhood and I remember the smell of peat being burnt and I remember the
05:46lobsters coming in fresh and we used to kill the lobsters in boiling water. 1940-1941 there was
05:55real invasion scare that you know rumors were coming out of Norway quite early that the Germans
06:00were heading for Shetland. My father's signet ring which was exactly like that one he was given a cyanide
06:08capsule that was placed in there if the Germans attacked which was thought highly likely his orders
06:14were to hit a table or a door or something and I think that gave him a minute and a half or something to
06:20live and my mother was given a beautiful Smith and Wesson revolver and her orders were to shoot me
06:26first and then to shoot herself and she certainly would have done it because if you got caught and
06:32tortured the risk was too big it certainly kept the morale of the Norwegians up and it kept something
06:43like nearly 300 000 German troops in Norway. Now if the Norwegian resistance had cracked
06:49those 300 000 men fresh well fed could have gone down to the main battlefronts and it would have made
06:58a huge difference because 300 000 people is an army. Some of the crewmen became very well known after the
07:05war. In Norway Shetland Larsson who was the sort of top skipper he became a legend. He was simply a merchant
07:15man before the war but Leif Andreas Larsson received more decorations by Britain than anyone else in World
07:23War II. He has every decoration Britain could offer and equally Norway conveyed on him as many decorations as
07:31the country could be stolen. So I think that shows you that some of these men had exceptional bravery and
07:37exceptional characters. These people were fishermen and behaved like fishermen and but when it came down
07:42to it when they went on a mission they did the job a hundred percent and I think that shows that characters
07:49are not just judged by their education or what they were but what they did when the going got tough.
07:56You opened your homes to them gave them a sense of normality in all the madness and breathed a sigh of
08:05relief when the boat returned. For this we are forever grateful and we carry the name of Shetland and
08:13Scalaway with us since the peace returned to Europe and Europe got her senses again. The Shetland gang ruled these
08:23waves. The 44 rule them still. Thank you.