'Nobody was going to stand in our way'
RAT-a-tat-tat came the crack of guns.
A Luftwaffe bomber, shot up by ack-ack fire while attacking the naval fleet based at Scapa Flow, had been intercepted not far from Wick.
Two Hurricane fighters followed the Heinkel’s descent across the burgh’s skyline until it plunged to the ground at the RAF’s coastal command.
It was 1940 and this was 15-year-old Duncan Cormack’s first taste of war – and it left him speechless.
The retired policeman, who is now 88 and lives at Thorsdale View, Thurso, recalls being at home in Henrietta Street when he saw the captured invader overhead.
“We were sitting on the garden wall at the police house having a yarn and the planes were flying back and forth, and all of a sudden we heard this noise – we knew it was a German because their engines were non-synchronised; their beats were different.
“We recognised it and we looked up and here was this Heinkel coming over the town with smoke coming from it, with the two Hurricanes sitting one on each side of his tail.
“We were flabbergasted – mouth and eyes open. We saw war – it was there, happening in front of our eyes. It was terrific, we’d no need to read a book!”
The German plane was forced to land and the two surviving crewmen – including the pilot – were locked up in a cell in the town’s police station in Bridge Street where Duncan’s policeman father, Donald Beaton Cormack, was on duty.
The next day Donald regaled the wide-eyed teenager with stories of the PoWs – tales he soaked up eagerly.
But the incident went largely unreported in the John O’Groat Journal – as speech, like food, was rationed during wartime for fear of giving the enemy an advantage. At the time, Duncan, who would later join the Royal Marines, looked on this as part of the country being trained for war.
“Everything was secret, not to be broadcast, and in fact I did a lot of things in my service in the Far East that were never recorded.”
DUNCAN was born on November 25, 1924, in Reay police station where his father, originally from Lybster, was serving as a constable.
Donald was married to Cathy Mackay and the couple had five children – Duncan, Bill, Nancy and twins Donald and Gracie.
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When the station closed, the family moved to Halkirk in 1929, the year Duncan started his school career. He remembers his years in the village fondly, especially the freedom.
“The parents never knew where we were but they knew we were safe because there was always somebody about.”
Leisure time was spent playing football, river dipping and playing at a slate quarry near Gerston – and, in the right season, catching tiddlers in jam jars.
“Sometimes they blossomed all right and became frogs but sometimes there were occasions we left them in the sun and, of course, the poor little critters boiled.”
Cars also fascinated Duncan and his friends who would jot down the registration numbers of those which passed.
“We would compare lists at the school – maybe somebody would have half a dozen and somebody would have 12, but nobody ever had any more than that because you never saw that many cars in a day.”
This proved to be early detective training for Duncan, whose father would tear the pages from the notebook and keep the lists to help with any enquiries concerning vehicles.
When Duncan’s father was promoted to sergeant, the family were posted to Wick and Duncan joined the old North school in Louisburgh Street, graduating to high school before leaving at the age of 15.
When he saw the Heinkel bomber over Wick, Duncan, along with his friend Francis Lyall, had already joined the war effort – taking jobs at the aerodrome’s NAAFI stores.
“It was good fun and one thing we learned was how to smoke,” he remembers, laughing.
In 1942, Duncan received his call-up papers and attended his medical in the town’s masonic lodge, passing “A1.”
He admits he’d never heard of the Royal Marines until after his medical when he came across a sergeant in full dress uniform.
“He gave me a fag, we sat and smoked and he told me what the marines were.”
Duncan, who hadn’t been further south than Helmsdale, wasn’t keen on joining the army and was attracted by the prospect of commando training and landing craft raids that the marines offered.
“I was looking for some excitement – and I got it.”
DUNCAN was “thrilled to bits” to undertake his six weeks’ training at Exton barracks in Devon where he was treated very well.
“We had the best of food, the best of uniforms – everything was of the best.”
Luckily, he was ahead of the pack when it came to his basic training – which included rifle practice on the firing range, swimming and route marches – thanks to lessons learned during a five-year stint in the Boys’ Brigade in Wick. At home, he undertook drill practice every Friday night and even learned to swim – breaststroke, flat on his belly on the floor of the BB hall.
These skills he and his friends would hone on Saturdays at the town’s North Baths, racing from the pool to the lighthouse and back in freezing sea waters.
“It didn’t matter – we were hard, we were fit and we played football a lot too.”
From Devon, Duncan was transferred to Towyn, north Wales, where he spent six weeks training in anti-aircraft fire, signalling and navigation. He was then sent for two months to the Firth of Forth at South Queensferry where he first laid eyes on the 30 foot-long landing assault craft which he would later steer ashore on D-Day, before moving north to Invergordon.
“I was on home ground, the rest of them hadn’t a clue where Invergordon was! Of course they got a shock when they saw it because it was full of shipping – battleships, Navy ships and destroyers, you name it.
“We learned a lot at Invergordon – we started going out to sea with the officers and we would do exercises. On one occasion, when we’d nearly finished our training, one of the officers took us two miles out and told us to go round in a figure of eight – and lo and behold he put his hand in his pocket and took out a grenade and heaved it over the side. It fell in the water of course and exploded, and we got fish – three or four of them, floating in the water.”
Duncan started to find his sea legs and passed his coxswain’s test before his squad joined the US-built Empire Rapier.
While anchored, the Empire Rapier’s crews were allowed ashore for an hour a day but, as Duncan remembers, there wasn’t much to do – except go to the pub and have a half-pint for sixpence.
“I didn’t go the first time, I stayed outside because someone would know me and tell my father! That’s how green I was, I’d never been in a pub in all my life – I was 18 and a half,” Duncan jokes.
“Anyway, the second time we went ashore I said to heck with it, I’m going in with the boys. We got three half-pints. We were getting brave by then.”
WAR was inching closer for the men and the Empire Rapier soon set sail from Invergordon, Duncan’s training complete.
“We were into it then – it was our job. We knew what the ending would be – D-Day, we knew that.”
The ship was to join a convoy eight miles out, heading south.
“When we got there, it was black dark by then, and there was nothing but destroyers going about blowing their signals and we’d hear a Tannoy voice, ‘Get into line you!’, just roaring at us.
“We were all on deck but there was nothing we could see so we went back down below to our cabins.
“But an hour after that she started to roll – there were no troops on board, it was just ourselves, 50 of us. She rolled and rolled, and we got greener and greener. We looked at one another and said c’mon, up a deck; no use; up another deck; no use; right up to top deck, outside and, of course we never looked about, desperate to be sick over the rail, we unfortunately did it on the windward side – so we got it all back on our uniforms. That was 40 or 50 of us doing it all at the same time and the wind was blowing it back in our faces.”
The Rapier dropped anchor at the Firth of Forth, safe under the umbrella of ack-ack guns, before sailing onwards down the east English coast all the way to the Thames at London and on to Dover then Southampton.
“We got through quite quietly really and sheltered in the harbour at Southampton. We did a lot of exercises then, and got British troops on board – the troops we were going to take to Normandy.”
The crews were told they would be ferrying British soldiers to Gold beach for the invasion initially set for June 5, 1944, and prepared with training along the coast at Dorset and Cornwall right up until the week before D-Day when they returned to base at Southampton.
Duncan believed in the plan and had faith in its eventual success. “We said we’re going to flaming well do it and nobody’s going to stand in our way.”
With additional material taken from interviews conducted by Sandy Gunn of Thurso, in June 2006.
* See Friday’s John O’Groat Journal for the concluding part of Duncan’s story.