A Coll Bulletin of the Second World War

(Compiled from material kindly supplied by Kenneth Stewart, Neil Macfadyen, Gordon Macdonald.)

The island itself spent a fairly peaceful, reasonably comfortable and even rather amusing war. Undoubtedly the most dramatic single event was the grounding of the good ship Nevada at Struan Bay in 1942 (see Coll magazine 1985 for details). This was scarcely a full-scale disaster, but various preparations were made to cope with any that might occur, especially enemy invasion, to which all the Hebrides were considered vulnerable.

For part of the war a RAF listening post operated from Cornaig Lodge and a Home Guard unit was mustered among those able-bodied men not away on active service. The Guards were issued with the regulation uniforms, helmets, gas masks and rifles with twenty-five rounds of ammunition apiece. Each night four men occupied the two H.G. posts (at the Crossroads and beside Foxes' cottage) to report on any suspicious travellers on the roads. It might have been quite alarming to be challenged by a Guard in full military rig, but apparently the posts were as welcoming as any "travellers' rest" and many a spontaneous ceilidh took place in them. Not, however, in the presence of General Stewart appointed Commanding Officer, who often went on tours of inspection and took the whole business very seriously. He liked to put the men through 'field manoeuvres', helped by the notorious Patrick O'Conner who, having been in the army, taught them to use hand grenades and tank bombs. Luckily for us all no Germans landed, for, according to one former Guard, "We'd have been in a right mess if they had!"

In fact the only 'action' to occur on the island came from the sky and was tragic rather than threatening. Schoolboy Gordon Macdonald playing with his brother Peter at Acha brae in 1941 remembers seeing a lowflying, mis-firing plane heading towards Kilbride. The boys kept telling people about it but were not believed; '" Ach, wee laddies at the war games' was all we got". So it was three days later that the manager of Breacachadh Creamery, out for a walk along the shore, came upon the remnants of a plane and a pilot "both shattered to smithereens" near Hyne, which was then a deserted ruin. The young pilot, Stevens, had been on a training mission and the plane was one of three Spitfires which took off from Stirling that day and never returned. (Ed. note: A few remains of the plane still above ground at Hyne may interest early plane buffs.)

Civilian life on Coll went on much as usual except for checks on boat travel, the imposition of black-out and the occasional passing of merchant convoys, visible from "the windows of old Tigh na Mara through Mr Sturgeon's spy glass". Neil Macfadyen, a Glasgow schoolboy who came to stay with island relations during the war remembers that, and seeing the Home Guard at rifle practice, ". . . which meant shooting at tin cans floating off the middle pier." Owing to the shortage of adult men, Neil continues, "We children were called on to help with everything - peat cutting, milking, lifting tatties, getting the Coll cheeses on the ferry boat. And at weekends we'd patrol the bays looking for anything suspicious or different - like mines, wreckage from ships or planes."

Being wartime, treats were scarce: kids ate Horlicks tablets for sweets and when a consignment of beer arrived men queued at the bar for their ration, which was doled out into jam-jars. But at least there were plenty of rabbits. When these animals were introduced on to the island in the nineteenth century they were considered to belong to farmers, and poachers of them risked prosecution; but wartime Coll became a positive Klondyke for bunnies that were encouraged to breed and multiply in the manner of their kind to provide fresh meat for protein-starved mainlanders. Several people made big killings --literally and currency-wise -- and sometimes the pier shed was hung with hundreds of carcasses awaiting shipment.

Nice to imagine that the wartime ditty 'Run Rabbit Run' originated on Coll, but as that farmer carried a 'gun, gun, gun' and the islanders trapped their quarry with snares, I suppose it's rather unlikely!