X-craft

Islands in the  Forth - Fidra & Lamb

A sunny day, a stroll out to Aberlady bay with the breeze coming off the sea carrying the almond scent of meadowsweet, - what could be more pleasant?

Fritillary on red clover

The sandy paths cut through a profusion of wild flowers of every hue from the deep purple of woody nightshade, the purple orchids, through red clover to the  pink of ragged robin  and lousewort then the brilliant blue of vipers bugloss and vibrant yellow of ragwort and spearwort  and everywhere, butterflies, damsel flies and burnet moths.  Reed buntings sang from hawthorn bushes, swifts, swallows and martins swooped and swerved over the sedge grasses and bog cotton…a day to be thankful for.

Ragged Robin

Woody nightshade

Burnet moth on bush vetch

The concrete anti-tank blocks have been colonised by lichen making them look like Australian aboriginal art, something from Dreamtime… odd how nature can soften something so ugly and inimical into a thing of unexpected charm.

  

  

 Further out, on the long sandy beach, are the wrecks of two XT-craft, four man midget submarines used in WWII.   

   Four men spent days crouched in these tiny vessels only able to surface for short periods at night..  For a claustrophobe who needs to be out in the fresh air with space to move freely, my admiration for them knows no bounds!

There are scores of beautiful shells half embedded in the sand. I think they are called otter shells, bringing to mind pleasing images of a sea otter lying on its back with a stone in its paws, cracking open a shell balance on its abdomen.

The two X-craft were exposed to a different type of shell, having been used for target practice when their role was no longer required.

In the event of an invasion in 1940, this beach might have been the German equivalent of the Normandy D-Day beaches. The possibility of landings from Nazi-occupied Norway in support of a cross-Channel invasion was taken very seriously, hence the anti-tank obstacles and the pill-boxes scattered throughout East Lothian.

The X-craft did play a role in 1944, hiding on the seabed for days before the landings and then acting as light ships to guide the incoming forces to the beaches.

 Odd, too, that these tiny submarines that paved the way for the Normandy invasion, should have ended up here where once  it was feared that  the tide of war might flow the other way.

All that seems a long time ago, amongst the peace of the bay with the cry of curlew and the squabbling of gulls but, at every low tide, the skeletons of the X-craft surface again to remind us of the bravery of the men who manned them.