An article adapted from a talk given at Inver by Jason Ubych on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. They explore the 1943 evacuation of Inver, local military training for Normandy, and personal stories that connect the area directly to D-Day.
When I was first asked to speak in Inver about the wartime evacuation, I felt a certain hesitation. Some of our honoured guests today were themselves evacuees. That carries a responsibility. The museum does not hold secret files or dramatic photographs of the evacuation, but it does preserve stories—and it is these stories that help us understand what happened here, and why it mattered.
The Evacuation
We now know that the coastline of Easter Ross was selected for large-scale military exercises in preparation for the Allied landings in Normandy. In November 1943, however, this was a closely guarded secret. Those living in Inver were not told why they were being forced to leave.
An area of roughly fifteen square miles was evacuated, including the entire village of Inver. Around 900 people were displaced, among them 56 children. Families were scattered across the region: some went to Embo, Helmsdale, Milton, and Kildary, while Ross Street in Tain was said to have been almost entirely populated by evacuees from Inver.
Livestock was sold at auction in Dingwall, with the exception of chickens. As more than one former resident recalled, chicken soup featured heavily on the menu for months afterwards.
On 12 December 1943, shortly after the final evacuations, the military moved in.
Billy Innes, a farmer who was eight years old at the time, remembered the arrival of the troops:
“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.”
Andrew Munro and his father were among the last to leave their farm:
“We came down for our last cartload of turnips the day before the shooting began. We were trying to get as much off the farm as we could. Some official came up saying, ‘Get out of here at once or you’ll get shot!’ But we just filled the cart and took it away.”
Who Were These Soldiers?
Newspaper reports at the time, including articles in The Scotsman, referred to the presence of Assault Force ‘S’—the combined army and naval force assigned to land at Sword Beach on D-Day. The reality was more complex.
While elements of the 3rd Infantry Division were based at Fort George and Invergordon, the Tarbat Peninsula itself was used by multiple armoured units as a specialist live-firing and amphibious training area. Tanks, landing craft, and naval support vessels all operated here.
War diaries from the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards show that the regiment spent much of January 1944 training in the area. Their entries describe repeated embarkations and landings at Tarbat Ness, live firing with six-pounder guns, and large-scale battle practice exercises involving Sherman tanks.
By late January, full squadrons were conducting coordinated battle runs across the peninsula, despite poor weather, wireless silence restrictions, and difficult terrain. One entry records a tank rolling into a burn when a bridge collapsed beneath it—fortunately without casualties.
At the height of these exercises, four large landing craft loaded with tanks were practising assaults on the coastline, while twenty-two Sherman tanks operated across the Tain ranges and surrounding ground.
These diaries provide only one regiment’s perspective. Many others trained here, and a fuller picture would emerge if more regimental records were examined.
The Return Home
By April 1944, the troops had moved south. In May, residents were allowed to return.
They found fields cratered by shellfire, roads churned by tracked vehicles, and buildings damaged or destroyed. It was later said that half of the Red House at Arboll had been destroyed during the exercises. At Geanies House, a shell had passed straight through the roof.
For decades afterwards, farmers continued to uncover live, unexploded shells while working their land.
The evacuation and military occupation lasted from November 1943 to May 1944.
In the early hours of 6 June 1944, many of the men who had trained here were crossing the English Channel, waiting for the order to land in Normandy.
Jack Munro
While they waited offshore, one man from Tain was already in France.
Jack Munro had enlisted in the Seaforth Highlanders before volunteering for the Parachute Regiment. On D-Day, he took part in what was described as one of the most dangerous missions of the invasion: the assault on the German coastal battery at Merville, which threatened the eastern flank of the landings at Sword Beach.
The battery had to be destroyed before the first assault craft reached the shore. Although the operation succeeded, Jack did not reach his objective. Like many paratroopers that night, he was dropped miles from his intended landing zone.
Jack and two other paratroopers hid for several days, later linking up with others in similar situations. With help from the French Resistance, the group—eventually numbering around forty—attempted to return to Allied lines. As the German front hardened, they realised this was unlikely to succeed.
One survivor later recalled:
“About July 5th, after living with the French Resistance since just after D-Day, we decided to try to get back through the lines. There were about twenty of us, so we split up into twos and threes. Pte. Munro and Pte. Laing decided to try to get to Spain. That was the last I saw of them.”
Jack Munro never reached Spain. It is believed he changed course and attempted to return to his battalion. He was killed shortly afterwards and buried alongside Lance Corporal Stan Eckert at Touffreville in Normandy. They are assumed to have died together.
The destruction of the Merville Battery helped protect the eastern landings and contributed to the comparatively low casualties suffered by the forces coming ashore at Sword Beach. The 3rd Infantry Division advanced inland towards Caen, though the city itself would not fall for weeks.
Kazimierz Ubych
The final story is more complicated—and a reminder that wartime experience was not always clear-cut.
My great-uncle, Kazimierz Ubych, is buried in Lokeren, Belgium, where he was killed in action on 15 September 1944 while serving with the 1st Polish Armoured Division.
He was born on 23 January 1920 in Turek, Poland. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he was nineteen. In early 1944, he was forcibly conscripted into the German Army. He initially refused, but after three months of imprisonment, he relented and was enlisted on 28 March 1944.
On 8 June—just two days after D-Day—Kazimierz was taken prisoner by Allied forces near Bayeux. The German army had abandoned the town on 6 June. Whether he witnessed the landings or was stationed near the beaches, we do not know.
He was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in England, where he volunteered to join the Free Polish Forces. After training in Fife, he was assigned to the 1st Polish Armoured Division on 24 July 1944. For his own safety, and that of his family in occupied Poland, he was given the assumed name Kazimierz Kryscinski.
Within weeks he was back in France. He fought at Caen, in the Falaise Pocket, and then through northern France and Belgium. In little over six months, he had been imprisoned, conscripted, captured, re-enlisted, and returned to combat. He was twenty-five when he was killed.
Closing
We may never find photographs of tanks and landing craft training at Inver. But we do know where many of those same vehicles were photographed on 6 June 1944—attacking the beaches of Normandy in the early hours of the invasion. Normandy landings. Image: Imperial War Museums.
That connection, between this quiet coastline and one of the defining moments of the twentieth century, is worth remembering.