Mr Munro

Mr Willie Munro was born in Rogart and was 21 years old when he joined the territorials. This was before the war actually broke out. Mr Munro didn’t want to go to war but he knew if it happened he wanted to be in with his friends.

Mr Munro was in the Lovat Scouts. He told us that the Lovat Scouts were special because they had been formed by Lord Lovat and were made up of ghilles, game keepers, crofters and shepherds, men who would be good at scouting the land and finding things out.

When Mr Munro joined up he became trooper Munro because in 1938 the Lovat Scouts were a mounted regiment and he had to ride horses. In the picture you can see his spurs and riding breeches. As a territorial he went to training camps and practised his riding skills to perfection but when the war came horses were not needed so he had to be retrained. At one time he was in Wales learning to climb mountains.

The Scouts were sent to the Faeroe Islands. They were to have gone to Norway but the Germans invaded before they could be sent. He spent two years in the Faeroes and made friends with the islanders and has revisited them over the years. Some of the men even married local Faroese girls but sadly they did not all return to their wives after the war. Recently (2004) Mr Munro travelled to Italy, with another Lovat Scout, to visit some of the places they fought in. Whilst there, he took a photograph of one of the graves of a Scout who died there and sent it to a lady in the Faeroes. It was the man’s daughter but she had never seen her father.

German prisoners

The Faeroes were important during the war because the Arctic convoys on their way to Russia called in there so the islands were often visited by German bombers.

At one point the Scouts were used to guard the Royal family at Balmoral and pictures were taken of the officers with the King, the Queen Mother and the Princesses.

Lovat Scouts with King, the Queen Mother and the Princesses