LUNNA
A visit to Lunna in Shetland has a remarkable way of transporting you back to the early years of the Second World War. Set against a beautiful and peaceful landscape, it is easy to let the imagination drift back to a very different time, when this quiet corner of Shetland played an important part in the war.
The “Shetland Bus” became a vital lifeline between Shetland and German-occupied Norway. From small fishing boats made hazardous crossings of the North Sea, carrying supplies and secret agents into Norway and bringing refugees and others in danger back to safety. Many brave and secret operations began here, and if the walls of Lunna House could talk, they would have many stories of courage, hardship and sacrifice to tell.
In his famous book The Shetland Bus, Sub-Lieutenant David Howarth describes the early days at Lunna and explains why, in 1942, the operation was moved from this remarkable wartime base to Scalloway.
SUMMER REFIT
“When the nights became too short for the boats to make the crossing safely, we were able to take stock of our first winter’s work with a certain amount of satisfaction. We had made forty trips to Norway ; landed forty-three agents and picked up nine; landed a hundred and thirty tons of arms and equipment; and brought forty-six refugees across to Shetland. We could see that we might have done much more if we had known as much at the beginning of the winter as we knew at the end of it. But experience in such an odd kind of warfare had to be bought, and we felt that perhaps the most valuable result of that winter’s operations was that all of us, both crews and shore staff, had gained in knowledge and experience and were confident we could keep open communications with every part of the coast in the following winter. By that spring our crews and our boats were good, and our base organisation was working smoothly. We were all agreed about the things we still needed, and had made plans to provide them for ourselves during the summer. Above all, we had been through a hard winter together and had confidence in each other.
We intended to make several changes in our base for the next season. The main one was to move the operational crews and boats from Lunna to the village of Scalloway. There were many reasons for this change of plan. A year earlier we had chosen Lunna because it was so far from anywhere that very few people would know of our goings-on. Since then, of course, some Shetlanders had learned more or less what we were doing ; but they had been so discreet that we thought there was no longer any harm in working in a village. Besides, every man, woman and child in Norway knew about us, and referred to our route as the Shetland Bus ; and we had succeeded in inflicting enough flea-bites on the Germans for them to know very well what kind of insect we were, and where we came from. So the only things which still had to be kept secret were the actual destinations of the boats.
Thus the main reason for using Lunna had disappeared ; and much as I personally liked it, it had many disadvantages as a base. It was so remote that it was difficult to supply in winter. A bad snowstorm would soon cut it off, and the road had given us some anxiety, for it was built on peat, and when a heavy lorry passed over it one could easily see it subsiding under the weight and springing up again like a feather bed afterwards. It still remained difficult to amuse the crews at Lunna when they were ashore. And worst of all, there were endless problems in repairing the boats there. It caused too much delay to send them to Lerwick for all the repairs they needed, and sometimes, of course, when they needed them most, they could not get to Lerwick under their own steam and had to be towed. Besides, we had come to the conclusion that we would have to run our own engineers’ and shipwrights’ workshops. We already had the Norwegian craftsmen, but to build adequate workshops at Lunna would have cost a lot of money and made the place conspicuous from the air. And furthermore, before an engineering workshop can be really resourceful at emergency repairs it needs to be in existence for years, and to accumulate stacks of useful scrap in every corner.
So everything pointed to a move either to Lerwick or Scalloway, which are the only places in Shetland which a southerner would call a town or village. Lerwick was altogether too urban and cosmopolitan, and its harbour and repair works were fully used by the Navy. Scalloway, on the other hand, was on the wrong side of the islands for voyages to Norway. But what finally decided us was that the owners of the marine engineering firm in Scalloway, who had already done some very good work on our boats, said they were willing to let our Norwegian engineers work in their workshops together with their own employees, which was just what we needed”.
The Shetland Bus, David Howarth. Thomas Nelson and Sons, (1955), pp.118-119
