The Orkneys and the POWs of WW II

The last couple of days have been hectic, to say the least.  Wednesday was taken up with wandering around Kirkwall before catching the 4:15 back to Inverness, arriving about 9:00 p.m., then yesterday up and off again by 5:30.  This time off to Belfast.  What an expedition that was!  First, there was the train from Inverness to Perth, then from Perth to Queen St. station in Glasgow.  Hop a bus to Glascow Central, where I caught the train to Ayr.  From Ayr, it’s a bus to Cairnryan for the ferry.  I have to tell you, the Stena Lines ferry service makes B.C. Ferries look like a complete joke.  More about that later.  The crossing is just over two hours and I arrived at the Belfast Port.  Another bus to the city centre and finally the hotel.

Back to the ferry.  The place is like a floating hotel.  On the uppermost deck, there are cabins and a spa.  There are lounges and living rooms all over the place, with comfy chairs, sofas, tables and the like.  There is a great playroom for the kids, a video arcade, a mini-casino, cinema and shops that carry everything from the cheesy souvenirs to designer perfumes and jewellery.  There are a couple restaurants and a bar.  And the price of all this, you ask.  The entire trip, start to finish, all ten hours of trains, busses and ferry was a whomping £ 38.  That translates into about CAD $65.  Hello, B.C. Ferries – take note.

Interior of the Italian Chapel

Change of direction and back to the Orkneys.  I traipsed across the Churchill Barrier Wednesday morning to check out the Italian Chapel.  The Italian POWs were given a couple of quonset huts to use for a chapel, but felt that the inside was a little lacking.  With the okie-dokie of the commander of the camp, the POWs then put their skills to use and beautified the interior.  With quite a bit of ingenuity, they made the place quite incredible.  The lanterns hanging from the ceiling on the centre aisle, for example, were made from bully beef tins.  The place is really quite spectacular, given what it is and what materials the POWs had access to.

Lantern From Bully Beef Can

I met up with a very nice lady as I waited for the bus back to Kirkwall and we ended up chatting about the chapel and the camp.  Based on what I had read at the site, it didn’t seem to me that the POWs had had such a bad time during their tenure there and I asked the lady about that. 

“Aye,” she said.  “They had a good time of it.  I have a brooch that my father had them make for me for my birthday.  They very often made and sold things to the villagers.”

She went on to describe the brooch and to tell me more about life in the camp.  Apparently, even their families were allowed to visit them.  It’s certainly a far cry from what I’ve heard about other POW camps in other parts of the world – Japan or Germany.