Wartime Wednesday: The Shetland Bus

Wartime Wednesday: The Shetland Bus

I recently discovered a BBC mystery show called “Shetland.” Well-written and realistic without being gruesome, the series is set on the Shetland Isles, an archipelago made up of over 100 islands (15 of which are inhabited). Located northeast of Britain in the subarctic region, the islands are part of Scotland. They are closer to Norway than mainland Scotland, and the history of the two countries is strongly intertwined.

The first episode solved a cold case that occurred during WWII (my favorite period in history!) and involved sailors who were part of the Shetland Bus. I was unfamiliar with the Shetland Bus, so as soon as I finished watching, I dug out my computer and started researching.

The Shetland Bus was the nickname given to a loosely formed group of commercial fisherman who agreed to work for the British Secret Intelligence Service and Special Operations Executive. Their main purpose was to ferry agents, supplies, communications equipment, and weapons in and out of Norway. They also helped Norwegians, who feared arrest by the occupying Germans, to escape.

Initially there were fourteen fishing crafts used, but after several losses of boats and men, it was decided that faster ships were required. The new boats were powered by 1,200 hp diesel engines and could reach a top speed of 25 mph. In 1943, the U.S. Navy assigned three submarines to the operation, and it became an official part of the Royal Norwegian Navy. Most of the crossings were made in the winter under cover of darkness. (Like Alaska, Shetland experiences nearly 20 hours of darkness during the winter months, and the same number of hours of daylight during the summertime.) I cannot imagine how cold it was in an open boat going over the North Atlantic in winter – brrr!

Leif Larson was one of the most famous of the “Bus” men, conducting fifty-two crossings and becoming a highly decorated Naval Officer. A memorial erected in Scalloway commemorates the operation and the brave men associated with it. More information can be found in David Howarth’s Shetland Bus: A WWII Epic of Escape, Survival, and Adventure. I haven’t read the book, but over 80% of its ratings are four- and five-star.

Mystery Monday: W. Somerset Maugham-Playwright, Novelist and Spy

W. Somerset Maugham-Playwright, Novelist and Spy

W. Somerset Maugham

Every August, the local hospital conducts a street fair of enormous proportions. It has been held for decades and is greatly anticipated by locals and visitors alike. The book tent, which is of course my favorite, holds thousands of books. I have found countless treasures in the past and am looking forward to this year’s fair.

One of last year’s finds was W. Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden, or the British Agent. A collection of loosely related stories, it follows the career of writer-turned-spy Ashenden who decides his new career is not nearly as exciting as he expected. At one point he complains that his life “is orderly and monotonous as a city clerks.” Despite being surrounded by murder, intrigue, and betrayal, his job is to watch and report back to the “powers that be.”

Set during WWI and the subsequent Russian Revolution, Ashenden is partly based on Maugham’s own experiences. By 1914, he had published ten plays and ten novels. His eleventh book, Of Human Bondage, was released in 1915 while he was serving in France in the British Red Cross’s Ambulance Corp.

During his return to England to promote the book, he was recruited by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. His first assignment was in Geneva where he set himself up as a French playwright and acted as liaison between field agents and headquarters in London. The reports were coded into his manuscripts and escaped notice of the Swiss. In 1917, Maugham was sent to Russia to gather intelligence on the German spy network.

Too old to enlist during WWII, Maugham spent the war in the United States, where he was asked by the British government to make speeches to encourage the US to send aid to the UK.

Most consider him to be the first author of spy stories who was actually a spy. He considered his exploits useful for his writing career, but not much else. In Ashenden’s forward Maugham writes, “The work of an agent in the Intelligence Department is on the whole monotonous. A lot of it is uncommonly useless.”

I wonder what today’s spies would think about his words.