The 51st division with over one thousand men from Inverness and Cameron Highlanders was captured in 1940, in Saint Valerie. They didn’t have a chance in that war, they were ill armed and had no anti-tank defenses; it was a case of fighting tanks with rifles. Eventually they ran out of ammunition, they had no artillery to support them and they had to surrender.

The regiment was resuscitated after ‘41 and a lot of the Inverness boys went in it and they went out first of all to North Africa and beat the Germans in battle of El Alamein. My best friend was sergeant in the Cameron Highlanders and they took part in the D-day landings. I think it was D-ay + 2 when the Cameron Highlanders of the 51st division landed in France. A lot of them had relatives who were in prisoners of war camps in Germany so they were determined, very determined to free them. We always thought about our prisoners during the whole course of war. I thought about my friends, my cousins who were prisoners in Germany it made me more intense to do my duty because we know it was important for them to get home.

Anyway the Camerons fought tenaciously, and unfortunately 2 weeks before the end of the war my best friend was killed by a German sniper. The war was only going to last 2 more weeks. It hurt me very much to realise he fought all through North Africa to Italy and he came home into France and he was killed in Holland 2 weeks before the war ended.

Another friend of mine who won the Liberty Cross, Iain McKenzie’s brother from Grant Street, he told me it was the saddest day of his life when he buried John up in Holland, because he was a fine solider and he never, ever refused his duty and I went out and saw his grave .

During the whole war we were thinking about the prisoners, so many of them were my friends. One thousand men from Inverness were captured and that made me so determined to ensure that they got home. They were our inspiration and sometimes we didn’t want to do something but we had to do it to get them home.