The great D-Day dry run: How a top-secret operation in a tiny Highland village helped the Allies smash Hitler’s legions (with the help of 8,000 sheep, 50 pigs and some VERY reluctant evacuees)

In the winter of 1943, the quiet farming communities of the Tarbat peninsula were shocked to find themselves unexpectedly caught up in the war raging on a distant continent.

At a packed village hall, they were given orders from the Admiralty announcing that 15 square miles of land were to be ‘requisitioned’ for military purposes. 

A total of 900 people were given a month to vacate their homes, while more than 40 farms had the same amount of time to move or sell their livestock, equipment and crops.

The operation was carried out with such a degree of secrecy that even those living a few miles away from this newly restricted zone had no idea what was happening. 

The real reason was kept hush-hush – even from the evacuees. 

Pictured: Troops from the 48th Royal Marines at Saint-Aubin-sur-mer on Juno Beach, Normandy, France, during the D-Day landings

Portmahomack village and beach, on Tarbat peninsula, Easter Ross

Portmahomack village and beach, on Tarbat peninsula, Easter Ross

The isolated location of Portmahomack was ideal for the secret nature of the operation

The isolated location of Portmahomack was ideal for the secret nature of the operation

The truth was, the beach west of Portmahomack was found to have exactly the right layout to make it the ideal place to practise for the D-Day landings.

The long-prepared invasion to win back Europe from Hitler would prove the turning point in the Second World War and is regarded as among the greatest military operations in history.

But part of D-Day’s success relied on six months of secret operations carried out 80 years ago on a sliver of the coastal Highlands which doubled for the Normandy beaches. 

The residents hurriedly removed from their homes would only discover much later that it wasn’t that their country needed them so much as it needed their countryside.

The Admiralty had scoured the land to identify suitable training areas for D-Day, according to local historian Dr James Fallon, who has written a booklet about this little-known evacuation.

‘They went to a lot of trouble. A whole lot of criteria had to be met before an area could be considered,’ he explained.

The Tarbat peninsula, in Easter Ross, with its beaches to the north and steep cliffs to the south, appeared to fit the bill perfectly.

For those living there, it was a question of going along with the war effort, whether they liked it or not.

Build-up of Allied forces landing at Omaha Beach, Normandy, on the D-Day landings

Build-up of Allied forces landing at Omaha Beach, Normandy, on the D-Day landings

Troops and equipment en route, in preparation for Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy

Troops and equipment en route, in preparation for Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy

A fleet of  landing craft assault passing a landing ship during exercises prior to the invasion of Normandy

A fleet of landing craft passing a landing ship during exercises prior to the invasion of Normandy

The affected area stretched from east of Hill of Fearn and north of the seaboard village of Hilton to south-west Portmahomack and Rockfield. 

Two schools were also closed. Most people found accommodation with family nearby, but the biggest headache belonged to farmers, most of whom had no option but to sell their entire livestock.

A special auction mart was hastily set up in Dingwall to sell the 8,000 sheep, 1,000 cattle and 50 pigs – and secrecy required that only selected buyers from across Scotland and the north of England were invited. 

Crops including wheat, barley, oats and potatoes were picked by Italian POWs, the Women’s Land Army and even members of the Home Guard.

Evacuation is a word more commonly associated with bombed-out cities. 

In the village of Inver, then little more than a row of thatched cottages on a dirt track looking out across the Dornoch Firth, children like Marion Fleming were used to having the run of the fields and the beaches. She and her mother, brother and sister were sent to live with her grandmother in Tain.

‘I think there was some resentment, some bewilderment. Where were we going? Where would we go to school? And we had to be on our best behaviour at my granny’s,’ she would later recall.

She and her friends found the busy market-town a forbidding place: ‘It was dreadful.

‘There was traffic and pavements, no beaches to play on, just a small back green. The Inver children didn’t have any road sense, we didn’t need it – there were two cars in our village.’

Special Service troops of 47 Royal Marine Commando land at Gold Beach near Le Hamel on D-Day

Special Service troops of 47 Royal Marine Commando land at Gold Beach near Le Hamel on D-Day

She added: ‘There was a corner in Tain near where a lot of evacuees lived.

‘My uncle used to call it Hellfire corner, because every time he drove round it, he would say, ‘Hellfire, I’ve missed another one!’.’ 

In his work, Evacuation Tarbat Peninsula 1943-44, Dr Fallon revealed the elderly were particularly upset by the move, with a Captain de Courcy Ireland, commander at Fearn aerodrome, reporting that some of the Inver villagers refused to leave.

‘When they were threatened with force, they claimed to have flu and retired to bed,’ he wrote. ‘The authorities brought a fleet of ambulances and carried the people out.’

There were some benefits to moving, however, such as running water and electricity. John Ross was seven when his family moved to Invergordon, a military town buzzing with soldiers.

Speaking some years ago, he said: ‘It was as different as chalk and cheese. Invergordon was heaving. 

At home, I used to see a train about once a year if we went to Tain – in Invergordon they were passing every day. I couldn’t get over the electricity; flicking a switch and a light coming on.’

But the thrill of new experiences was tempered by anxiety. He added: ‘We wondered if we were ever going to go back, and if we were, what we would go back to.’

British troops landing on Queen Beach, Sword Area. The picture was colourised to commemorate the 74th anniversary of D-Day

British troops landing on Queen Beach, Sword Area. The picture was colourised to commemorate the 74th anniversary of D-Day

Farmer Billy Innes, who was eight at the time of the evacuation, would long remember the day the troops arrived.

‘They were digging, putting up barbed wire, getting ready. They made a dug-out in the hill with seats all round it.

‘That was where I tasted my first cup of coffee. They were always making coffee up there.’

On December 12, 1943, the military moved in. It proved a long hard winter – ideal, as it turned out, for the vile conditions that blew up on June 6, 1944.

Around 15,000 troops from Assault Force ‘S’, the combined army and navy force due to take part in the D-Day invasion at Sword Beach, were based around Inverness and Invergordon.

While the fishing village of Portmahomack itself was not evacuated, it was isolated by closed roads and military checkpoints.

The Tarbat peninsula was used as a live firing range for infantry of the Third Division, and support vessels firing from the sea.

Tarbat was a key training area for armoured units, including the secret new ‘swimming tanks’ which ultimately provided vital counter-fire against enemy guns on the Normandy beaches.

Not only did the exercises near Portmahomack prove essential to the success of D-Day, but some believe they helped fool the Germans into believing the Allies planned to strike further north, perhaps even in Norway, where the Nazi military retained six divisions, weakening their defensive strength in Normandy.

D R Fallon records the atmospheric picture of the evacuated zone described by a teacher, Mrs Macdonald from Balintore, who passed through every day on her way to Tarbat Old Primary School and saw not ‘a human being at farm or croft, not a sheep or cattle beast anywhere, not even a rabbit scuttling out of sight, and dead silence over all, except for the intermittent gun-fire. It was rather eerie, especially as daylight faded’.

Soldiers limbering up for the invasion of Normandy

Soldiers limbering up for the invasion of Normandy

Stories of the Tarbat evacuation have long passed into local legend: the collie dog which found its own way back to Inver from Tain and lived there alone until its master returned, befriended and fed by the soldiers; the old lady living near the exclusion zone who survived a shell coming through her roof while she was having her tea.

Although the military was forbidden from entering any evacuated house, many evacuees fretted about their property until in April 1944, the troops finally moved south and residents were allowed to return the following month.

They found the land cratered by shells, the roads and fields churned up by tanks and the trees studded with bullets. 

Fences and dykes were broken, there was no livestock and everything had to be replanted. Even the wildlife had fled. For the next 20 years, farmers would be digging up live unexploded shells in their fields.

Nevertheless, most people were thrilled to be back, especially the children. Marion Fleming recalled: ‘I remember the breathless excitement. I think I would have died if I hadn’t come home, I was so homesick.’

Two inscribed boulders commemorating the evacuation were unveiled for the first time on June 6, 2004, to mark the 60th anniversary of D-Day. 

The twin stones at Inver and Portmahomack are a permanent reminder of how a quiet corner of Scotland endured a mock battle to help win a war.

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