In the final episode of the BBC television comedy, Dad's Army, broadcast on 13 November 1977, Corporal Jones's wedding reception is interrupted when the Home Guard is put on alert for a possible German invasion. The platoon agrees that, if Hitler comes, they will fight to the last. As Captain Mainwaring says, there are ‘Thousands of us, all over England’. Frazer, the lugubrious Scots undertaker, interjects, ‘and Scotland’.
Like so much comedy, the joke reveals a deep truth. The national myth of 1940, that Britain stood alone, defended only by Dad's Army on the ground and by dashing pilots in the air, is not only Anglo-centric but essentially a myth of Kent and Sussex (Walmington-on-Sea, the fictional setting for Dad's Army, was based on Hastings and Bexhill-on-Sea). Gordon Barclay's study of Scotland's Second World War anti-invasion defences begins with a reminder that the fall of Norway meant that Scotland was genuinely threatened. The sandy beaches along the east coast of Scotland presented perfect locations for disembarking troops and materiel and behind these beaches the eastern side of Scotland includes the north–south routes used by armies from Tacitus to the Duke of Cumberland. The beautiful beaches of Fife, Angus and Sutherland could not, it was decided, be left undefended.
Once the real possibility of invasion on this northern front has been established, Barclay gives the reader a solid foundation in the history of the conflict, as it relates to the invasion preparations. Part 1 looks at the first two years of war, the complacency that was rudely shattered at Dunkirk, the ensuing panic and the subsequent period of consolidation when existing defences were strengthened and improved. Part 2 deals with Scotland's planned airfield and harbour defences, the use of motor boats to defend lochs against a theoretical German deployment of troop-carrying seaplanes and of armoured trains as weapons platforms, manned by Polish troops who brought direct experience of their use to Scotland from their deployment in the post-1918 Soviet–Polish conflict.
The excellent maps in Part 3 demonstrate the extent and development over time of the networks of pillboxes and stop lines intended to impede the progress of an enemy force. The maps perfectly complement the contemporary photographs of their construction and use and, in conjunction with the plans of fortifications and obstacles, provide an easy to understand and readily accessible overview of the lines of defence across Scotland, how they were intended to work and the terrain and conditions experienced by the contractors engaged in their construction and the soldiers who mounted guard. The book is thus an admirable guide for exploring the sites of Scotland's Second World War defences, remembering that the remains we see now in the form of pillboxes and roadblocks were once supported by less durable fieldworks, including trenches and barbed wire familiar to Home Guard veterans of Flanders. This book does not explore these wider defensive elements but the Council for British Archaeology's handbook on twentieth-century military remains (Lowry Reference Lowry1996) and William Foot's Beaches, Fields, Streets, and Hills (Foot Reference Foot2006) are both useful sources for this material and should be regarded as companion volumes to this book.
Archaeology is concerned with the interaction between people and place. This book deals with place well and shows how, in a short period of time, a very real threat led to the defence of a significant portion of lowland Scotland, creating a militarised landscape. The people are very much present too, in the form of reports and official documents, complete with handwritten annotations, some dealing with the widespread concern that Nazi sympathisers were everywhere, communicating with the enemy through flickering lights or the raising and lowering of window blinds, and with rumours of cross-dressing enemy soldiers (one is reproduced in the book, a contemporary photograph of an army training exercise in which a ‘nanny’ produces a pistol from ‘her’ perambulator and ‘shoots’ a sentry – parachuting nuns remained in popular culture long enough for this reviewer to see a Fallschirmjager re-enactment unit dressed as nuns in the bar at an English Heritage Festival of History circa 1998).
While the Germans are constantly lurking offstage, another foreign army is very much present: Polish soldiers who escaped the division of their country in 1939 were largely responsible for manning the dunes of Scotland and their contribution is rightly acknowledged here. Whether dealing with Poles or Britons, Barclay effectively uses the asides, notes, war diaries and photographs to remind us that all these defences were the product of human endeavour. The reactions of the local population to the requisition, control and denial of ground are not recorded in detail, but can be guessed from one piece of graffito on an anti-tank cube near Aberdeen that included the defiantly optimistic words ‘Hitler's Graveyard’.
