At the OAP’s Thursday lunch club in Ness on the island of Lewis (18 women, one man) I was joyfully told this story. John Nicolson (the one man) tried to get exemption from war service in 1944/5 when he turned 18. He was sent to Edinburgh to go in front of a committee of officers and civilians to plead his case. When he told them he was only able man left in his township and was needed for croft work and peat cutting the chairman of committee said to him “I’ve been to the Western Isles and seen the men leaning with their elbows on the dyke smoking their pipes and looking on whilst the women did all the hard work…off to the army with you!”
Robin A Crawford 