#wartime — Public Fediverse posts

‘A Way for Russian Occupiers Go Home’: Ukraine Intel Reveals Why Kerch Bridge Still Stands

In brief: Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence says the Kerch Bridge remains politically symbolic but has lost much of its military value as Russia relies more on land routes through occupied southern Ukraine. Deputy intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky says Kyiv is now focused on disrupting wider logistics networks, countering Russia’s missile and drone production, and using strikes and sanctions to pressure the supply chains sustaining Moscow’s war effort.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84388

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #KerchBridge #infrastructure #Crimea #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

‘A Way for Russian Occupiers Go Home’: Ukraine Intel Reveals Why Kerch Bridge Still Stands

In brief: Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence says the Kerch Bridge remains politically symbolic but has lost much of its military value as Russia relies more on land routes through occupied southern Ukraine. Deputy intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky says Kyiv is now focused on disrupting wider logistics networks, countering Russia’s missile and drone production, and using strikes and sanctions to pressure the supply chains sustaining Moscow’s war effort.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84388

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #KerchBridge #infrastructure #Crimea #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

‘A Way for Russian Occupiers Go Home’: Ukraine Intel Reveals Why Kerch Bridge Still Stands

In brief: Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence says the Kerch Bridge remains politically symbolic but has lost much of its military value as Russia relies more on land routes through occupied southern Ukraine. Deputy intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky says Kyiv is now focused on disrupting wider logistics networks, countering Russia’s missile and drone production, and using strikes and sanctions to pressure the supply chains sustaining Moscow’s war effort.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84388

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #KerchBridge #infrastructure #Crimea #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

‘A Way for Russian Occupiers Go Home’: Ukraine Intel Reveals Why Kerch Bridge Still Stands

In brief: Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence says the Kerch Bridge remains politically symbolic but has lost much of its military value as Russia relies more on land routes through occupied southern Ukraine. Deputy intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky says Kyiv is now focused on disrupting wider logistics networks, countering Russia’s missile and drone production, and using strikes and sanctions to pressure the supply chains sustaining Moscow’s war effort.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84388

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #KerchBridge #infrastructure #Crimea #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

‘A Way for Russian Occupiers Go Home’: Ukraine Intel Reveals Why Kerch Bridge Still Stands

In brief: Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence says the Kerch Bridge remains politically symbolic but has lost much of its military value as Russia relies more on land routes through occupied southern Ukraine. Deputy intelligence chief Vadym Skibitsky says Kyiv is now focused on disrupting wider logistics networks, countering Russia’s missile and drone production, and using strikes and sanctions to pressure the supply chains sustaining Moscow’s war effort.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84388

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #KerchBridge #infrastructure #Crimea #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

UN Warns Ukraine Faces Toughest Wartime Winter Yet

In brief: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Alexander De Croo warned in an interview with the BBC that Ukraine could face its most difficult winter since the 2022 invasion due to systematic Russian strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure. De Croo noted that Ukraine enters the heating season from a very weak position, with severe damage to transmission lines, fuel stations, and urban centers raising the risk of widespread heating and water disruptions if temperatures plunge to -20°C.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84386

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #Winter #UN #infrastructure #civilian #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

UN Warns Ukraine Faces Toughest Wartime Winter Yet

In brief: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Alexander De Croo warned in an interview with the BBC that Ukraine could face its most difficult winter since the 2022 invasion due to systematic Russian strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure. De Croo noted that Ukraine enters the heating season from a very weak position, with severe damage to transmission lines, fuel stations, and urban centers raising the risk of widespread heating and water disruptions if temperatures plunge to -20°C.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84386

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #Winter #UN #infrastructure #civilian #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

UN Warns Ukraine Faces Toughest Wartime Winter Yet

In brief: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Alexander De Croo warned in an interview with the BBC that Ukraine could face its most difficult winter since the 2022 invasion due to systematic Russian strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure. De Croo noted that Ukraine enters the heating season from a very weak position, with severe damage to transmission lines, fuel stations, and urban centers raising the risk of widespread heating and water disruptions if temperatures plunge to -20°C.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84386

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #Winter #UN #infrastructure #civilian #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

UN Warns Ukraine Faces Toughest Wartime Winter Yet

In brief: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Alexander De Croo warned in an interview with the BBC that Ukraine could face its most difficult winter since the 2022 invasion due to systematic Russian strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure. De Croo noted that Ukraine enters the heating season from a very weak position, with severe damage to transmission lines, fuel stations, and urban centers raising the risk of widespread heating and water disruptions if temperatures plunge to -20°C.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84386

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #Winter #UN #infrastructure #civilian #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

UN Warns Ukraine Faces Toughest Wartime Winter Yet

In brief: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Administrator Alexander De Croo warned in an interview with the BBC that Ukraine could face its most difficult winter since the 2022 invasion due to systematic Russian strikes on civilian and energy infrastructure. De Croo noted that Ukraine enters the heating season from a very weak position, with severe damage to transmission lines, fuel stations, and urban centers raising the risk of widespread heating and water disruptions if temperatures plunge to -20°C.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/84386

#WarOfAggression #Ukraine #drone #Wartime #Winter #UN #infrastructure #civilian #occupied #warfare #army #war #Russia #DeepStrike #WarCriminal #invaders #occupiers
#перемогаYкраїни

Sunday, August 23, 2026

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026/08/sunday-august-23-2026/

Thursday, July 16, 2026

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2026/07/thursday-july-16-2026/

If war isn’t radicalizing us to radical action, then nothing is going to point us toward living out our purpose on this planet.

https://buttondown.com/impureleftist/archive/wartime-reading

#iran #war #wartime #reading #writersofmastodon #newsletter #trump #uspol #israel #worldpol #politics #politicalactivism #activism #activist #peace #pacifist #radical

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/11/wednesday-november-26-2025/

Thursday, November 13, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/11/thursday-november-13-2025/

Wednesday, November 12, 2025

https://activitypub.writeworks.uk/2025/11/wednesday-november-12-2025/

e/e • Masha Reva, road series made when the artist left Ukraine for Berlin, April 2022 ⦾ Маша Рева, роуд-серия, сделанная при отъезде из Ужгорода в Берлин, апрель 2022 года ⋆ Ukraine ⋆ https://www.picnob.com/pl/post/6854592455726032296438/ ⦾ https://www.instagram.com/mashareva/ #MashaReva #contemporaryphotography #roadseries #landscape #war #wartime #Zakarpattia #Ukraine #peaceforUkraine #Russianagression #2020s

d/e • Masha Reva, road series made when the artist left Ukraine for Berlin, April 2022 ⦾ Маша Рева, роуд-серия, сделанная при отъезде из Ужгорода в Берлин, апрель 2022 года #MashaReva #contemporaryphotography #roadseries #adornment #easter #folkart #artificialflowers #war #wartime #Zakarpattia #Ukraine #peaceforUkraine #Russianagression #2020s

c/e • Masha Reva, road series made when the artist left Ukraine for Berlin, April 2022 ⦾ Маша Рева, роуд-серия, сделанная при отъезде из Ужгорода в Берлин, апрель 2022 года #MashaReva #contemporaryphotography #roadseries #females #wartime #Zakarpattia #WestUkraine #Ukraine #Ukrainianartists #peaceforUkraine #war #Russianagression #2020s

a/e • Masha Reva, road series made when the artist left Ukraine for Berlin, April 2022 ⦾ Маша Рева, роуд-серия, сделанная при отъезде из Ужгорода в Берлин, апрель 2022 года ⋆ Ukraine ⋆ https://www.picnob.com/pl/post/6854592455726032296438/ ⦾ https://www.instagram.com/mashareva/ #MashaReva #contemporaryart #contemporaryphotography #roadseries #landscape #tractor #wartime #Zakarpattia #WestUkraine #Ukraine #Ukrainianartists #peaceforUkraine #war #Russianagression #2020s

The thread about a charity shop book that lead to the story of Captain William Thomson Dawson and the loss of the Leith tanker “Peder Bogen”

This thread was originally written and published in April 2023.

I was recently fortunate to acquire this book on the history of the Trinity House in Leith at my favourite charity book shop (St. Columba’s in Canonmills, go visit them!), for a very reasonable price.

It is signed on the inside cover, not by the author as I first thought, but by a “Captain Dawson OBE, the Master of Trinity House”.

The award of the OBE piqued my interest enough to look up our Captain Dawson, and it did not take long to find him: William Thomson Dawson. This is why his signature reads “W. Thomson“. Captain Dawson was a local man, born in Leith in 1910, the son of Margaret Alexander and James Dawson – a merchant navy officer. He was named after his grandfather, a Leith shipmaster. Our Captain Dawson was master of the Leith tanker SS Peder Bogen, a tanker owned by Leith’s Christian Salvesen shipping line. This steam-powered ship was 480 feet long, 62 feet wide and drew 37 feet (146 x 18.9 x 11.2m) with a gross tonnage (a measure of the carrying capacity of a merchant ship) of some 9,700 tons.

The Peder Bogen had been built in the Dutch city of Dordrecht in 1925 for the Norwegian whaling company Johan Rasmussen, being sold to the Salvesen’s whaling subsidiary The South Georgia Company in 1933, along with the base of Stromness on that island. She was a supply ship supporting the Salvesen’s whaling operations and fleet at South Georgia, carrying fuel and goods south and whale oil north, with the seasons.

When war broke out, the Peder Bogen found itself called up for convoy duty, bringing precious fuel oil east across the Atlantic, for which purposes she was given a token armament for self defence. She had made a number of such passages during the first years of the war until on 19th March 1942 she left Port of Spain in Trinidad, heading for Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she would join an eastbound convoy across the Atlantic. On board she had 11,000 tons of fuel oil for the Admiralty 52 crew (including Dawson) and a single passenger, the radio operator of the French tanker SS Melpomene, which had been sunk a few weeks previously en route from Belfast to Baton Rouge.

The journey north proceeded quietly for 4 days, until on the 23rd March she was hit without warning by two torpedoes from the Italian submarine Morosino, about 700 miles northeast of Puerto Rico and 745 miles southeast of Bermuda, in the position 24° 25′ 48″N by 57° 26′ 24″W.

The ship was holed, and with water pouring into her tanks and machinery spaces and the prospect of the 11,000 tons of oil (not to mention the ships own 2,000 tons of fuel) catching fire, Dawson assembled his crew on deck. He ordered the crew to take to the lifeboats, but asked for volunteers to stay aboard and form a skeleton crew to see if there was a chance of saving the tanker and its precious cargo. He and five others remained on the Peder Bogen, relit the boilers, raised steam and began pumping the water out. They fought a losing battle, and when there was 16 feet of water in the engine room had to abandon the fight and join the lifeboats too. The two little boats then retreated a safe distance to await rescue. For the second time in 3 weeks, the unlucky radio operator of the Melpomene found himself abandoning a torpedoed tanker.

Three hours later, the Peder Bogen had still neither sunk nor caught fire, so once again Dawson and his volunteers made the brave decision to board her and try to save her. The Morosini however had been stalking them, and as they made to do this she surfaced just a mile distant and opened fire with her two 4″ deck guns. The Italian’s gunfire was inaccurate, and it took them 40 rounds to score 5 hits, enough to set the tanker on fire and seal her fate.

The crew were all safe however, and spent a rather unhappy night watching the remains of their ship and its cargo on fire. The next day the two lifeboats set a course for the Virgin islands before becoming separated. They were well equipped for their journey, with food, water and survival gear, and the weather was favourable, so their chances were good. After 4 days rowing against the winds, Dawson’s boat was sighted by the “Clyde-built” Spanish ship Gobeo, which took all aboard. The Spaniards were sympathetic to the plight of the British merchant mariners and treated them well. They landed them in Lisbon, Portugal, 3 weeks later. The men of the other boat, carrying the remains of the Peder Bogen’s crew under First Officer Duncan were picked up the following day after becoming separated. The Argentinian ship Rio Gallegos took them to New York, where they landed 4 days later on March 31st.

On April 14th 1942, The Scotsman reported the happy news to Leith that all onboard the ship had been saved. A table at the bottom of this page lists the names, home towns and ranks and roles of all of the men, as reported by the paper.Captain Dawson was awarded the OBE in 1943 for his part, having “showed splendid courage, resource and leadership and made determined efforts to save his ship in circumstances of great difficulty and danger “. Three of the engineering officers were awarded the MBE and two Firemen recieved the BEM.

Dawson was made Master of Trinity House in 1964, a position he held until 1977. His medals, cap and ephemera were sold at auction in December 2022.

The Morosini was lost at sea on August 8th 1942 with all hands, to causes unknown. In a curious twist to the tale, Captain Dawson’s father, Captain James Dawson, was almost certainly the Captain James Dawson of Leith who was master of the steamer Fingal when she was sunk by a torpedo or mine in the North Sea in March 1915. Six of the crew lost their lives that day. James Dawson, father to the 5 year old William, did not abandon his ship until it slipped under the water but survived.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

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The Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students: the thread about their wartime role as Internment Camps for “Enemy Aliens”

This thread was originally written and published in January 2023.

An intriguing image was tweeted today, with the caption “WWII Prisoner of War Camp, Scotland, November 1939“:

Where was this camp? The soldier is very obviously equipped by the British Army, but the building doesn’t look very Scottish, does it? In fact it looks more like a French chateau. Is it a school, a hospital wing or a sanatorium? I didn’t know, so I shared the picture and quickly the answer came back (thanks Sean McPartlin, Graeme Dickson and Ian “Silverback”). It is the Suffolk Road Halls of Residence or to give them their proper name, the Edinburgh Hostels for Women Students. These were used as an internment camp for “enemy aliens” at the start of the war.

A 20 acre site in Newington, which had formed part of the the Craigmillar Golf Course, was purchased in 1913 for £10,000 by the Edinburgh Association for the Provision of Hostels for Women Students for a purpose-built accommodation hostel – or halls of residence. The Association was a joint venture between the Edinburgh Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers, Edinburgh University, the Edinburgh College of Art, the Edinburgh Merchant Company and the Edinburgh Episcopal Training College. The hostels were “for the more satisfactory housing of women students” and were intended to eventually have a capacity for 350, with 250 reserved for teaching students at Moray House College. There already existed two small halls of residence for women medical students, converted from houses, on George Square.

Each hostel had a common room, library and dining room and 52 separate study bedrooms. They were grouped around a quadrangle which had a hockey field and tennis courts. The architect was Alan Keith Robinson. This was the first large commission for Robinson and his partner Thomas Aikman Swan, but would be his last. Both volunteered to fight in WW1 and Robinson refused a commission so that he could fight “in the line”. He was severely wounded and was invalided out of the army in 1917. He attempted to restart his practice and partnership but his wounds prevented him properly realising this and he died from them in May 1925.

The first three hostels (Buchanan, Balfour and Playfair) were opened in June 1917 by Sir J. Alfred Ewing, Principal of the University at a cost of with £79,000; £44,000 from the Treasury and the bulk of the remainder from the Carnegie Trust. The running costs were to be met entirely by fees, in 1917 this was an annual £30 (about £2,600 in 2023).

The glory of the Scottish Universities is that they are open not simply to the rich but to those of very moderate means indeed. In Scotland we have always been proud of the fact that we have to cultivate the Muses on a little oatmeal, and even at the present price of oatmeal a Scottish University Education is cheap! There will, I feel sure, be a great satisfaction to all that a comparatively new side in university life will be developed in Scotland, namely the communal life; true education is not simply a matter of listening to lectures and studying books.

Opening speech by Sir Alfred Ewing

Two further hostels – Carlyle and Darroch – were added in 1928 to Robinson’s original designs by Frank Wood, at a cost of £60,000, adding 120 additional bedrooms.

So how did the hostels end up in the photo at the top of this page, fenced off behind barbed wire and with armed guards in watch towers? A brief notice in the Edinburgh Evening News of 30th October 1939 states that the hostels had been “taken over for national purposes.” But the “prisoners of war” in the picture are not servicemen, they are interned civilians. Most were sailors who had been caught in – or en route to – British ports, or in service on ships of Allied-aligned nations at the outbreak of war. Others were simply people of German birth who had been resident in Scotland but now found themselves to be undesirables; “enemy aliens“.

One of the latter category was Adolf Theurer, an hotel chef at the North British Hotel in Edinburgh who “hated the war, and hated the Nazis, but was a German.” Theurer, 61, had lived in Scotland for 44 years and had been at the NB for 37, but had never become naturalised – with war approaching he felt his poor health and good record as a citizen would stand in his favour. He had been interned during WW1 for 4 and a half years and had declared to his family that we would “rather be put against a wall and shot than be interned again“.

However, when he appeared at the “Aliens Tribunal” on October 12th 1939 they found against him and interned him at East Suffolk Road. Those subject to appearance at the tribunal were allowed no legal representation, but Theurer’s manager at the hotel had attended and spoke in his favour. He never saw his family again, and died 5 days later, “broken hearted”, from a heart attack. His family, at 16 Claremont Crescent, were only informed after his death and had not been allowed the opportunity to visit him during his final illness.

Theurer had been an active member of the German Congregation of Edinburgh, which had been forced to disband during WW1, and had assisted in the sale of its chapel to the Brethren after the war, an order in which he was also active. His wife – Johanna Becker – was also German (although her mother was Aberdonian and she was born in London) and they had three children in Edinburgh; George Adolf, Christina and William. His family were not allowed to take possession of his body, instead it was kept in the police mortuary. He was tragically unlucky; at this early stage of the war, relatively few Germans had been incarcerated. In May 1940 the Minister of Home Security, Sir John Anderson, informed the House of Commons that of 73,535 “aliens” in the country, only 569 – less than 1% – had been interned. There was an outcry of public sympathy for him and his funeral at Piershill Cemetery was well attended. John Mcgovern, the Independent Labour Party MP for Glasgow Shettleston raised a question in the House of Commons about the circumstances surrounding his death. Anderson replied that a “report would be prepared“.

This was not even the end of the Theurers’ travails however; on Friday 10th May 1940, two detectives knocked on the door of the Theurer house in Edinburgh while the family were eating a meal and requested that Johanna Theurer pack a case and follow them. Despite her protest, she was taken to Saughton Prison and sent into internment too. Her younger son, William, was a promising footballer who played with Blackpool and in Edinburgh, St. Bernards and later Hibs. He was a British citizen and was exempted from war service as a conscientious objector, telling his tribunal “I am not a member of any church, but my father was a member of the Plymouth Brethren. The horrors of war have been brought to my own door by his death“. He accompanied his mother to the prison gates.

William’s younger brother, George Adolf, went on to become a successful wigmaker in Edinburgh after the war. He was usually known as Adolf, one wonders if this was a direct tribute to his late father given the connotations such a name would have had at the time. He became a local politician, town councillor for Broughton Ward for the Progressives, 1959-74, senior Baillie and Deputy Lord Provost of the city and, after political reorganisation, Lothian Regional Councillor 1974-82.

An observation about the photo was made (by Adam Brown of the Scottish Military Research Group) that some of the men were dressed rather like sailors; zooming in we can definitely see men dressed in what look like peaked caps, sweaters and trousers tucked into sea boots! Contemporary newspaper reports confirm that all inmates were required to sew a circle of contrasting coloured cloth on to their outer garments and that most of the 100 kept at East Suffolk Road at this point were merchant seamen – unsurprising given the trade between the Port of Leith and the Baltic.

On November 18th, three men escaped from the camp, described as “a bow-legged boy of 15 and two others aged 17” The 15-year old was Rudi Platta and the other two were Walther Bartels and Gunther Berger. They were merchant seaman and had managed to steal khaki uniforms – including caps and boots – from off-duty guards while they slept, climb through a window, climb the barbed wire fence and a 10 foot high wall to escape under cover of darkness. Without money, with no English spoken amongst the three and with no real idea where they were going, their chances were not high. They were found 10 hours later walking along the road to Peebles some 20 miles away after a motorist who had passed them heard of their escape on returning home.

Further embarrassment was caused to the authorities (and further sensation was reported in the papers) just 3 days later when two men escaped on the night of 21st November. The pair – George Sluzalek (24) and Franz Feltens (22) were in their civilian attire and again had no money or food, little English, and no plan of where they were going. They became lost, thinking they were heading for the sea but actually they were moving inland. They resorted to eating turnips from a field that had been left out for wintering sheep and were later found nearby, cold and wet, hiding in a yew tree near Dalkeith by an alert gamekeeper.

A second pair of men – Eber Hord Rolf Fischer, aged 23, and Max Waderphul, aged 38 – also escaped that night, parting company with Sluzalek and Feltens after their breakout. Again they had little idea where they were and had no resources with them, but managed to make an impressive distance on foot. Around 430PM the following day they knocked on a cottage door to the south of Edinburgh to beg for tea in broken English. Although they aroused the suspicion of the householder, she showed them kindness and welcomed them in to her house and made them a small meal of bread and butter, cheese and cold mutton, telling reporters “I never saw anyone so grateful in my life“. They left after 15 minutes and she phoned the police; the men had disappeared by the time they arrived. They were on the run for 36 hours and a man hunt of hundreds of police and soldiers combed the Lothians looking for them. They were recaptured cold, wet, hungry and exhausted by the search parties near Heriot, some 22 miles south of Edinburgh and seemed glad to have been found.

Remarkably, a further three men almost escaped on the 21st but were spotted by a sentry who fired his rifle in their direction, raising the alarm. They were quickly captured by the camp defence unit. Some of the escapees were allowed to answer questions by press. when asked if they “had anything to complain about of the treatment they were receiving at the camp, one of them said emphatically, ‘No‘”. All of the men were reluctant to be drawn into answering questions about the quality and availability of food in Germany vs. Britain.

The Corporation of Edinburgh was deeply unhappy about the location and security of the camp, and at a meeting on the 23rd November it was resolved to make a formal request to relocate it out of the city boundary; Lord Provost Steele was able to tell the assembled councillors that he had already been given notification of the intention to move it. On Monday 4th November, the Aberdeen Evening Express announced that a “motley company” of almost 200 German men had left Edinburgh at Waverley station from “an internment camp on the south of the city – the camp which has been so much in the news recently because of escape bids.” The prisoners were reported to be in good spirits and waved and smiled to morning commuters. Some conversation was made between men who could speak English and railway employees, and cigarettes were shared with the captives.On Tuesday 5th, the Daily Record reported that in total 300 German internment prisoners had left Scotland for England “for the duration of the war”.

On 28th December, the Edinburgh Evening News reported that the camp would now be formally closed, with transit accommodation for processing prisoners “for no more than 48 hours” having been arranged at an unspecified hospital. The East Suffolk Road Hostels were turned over to the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) officer cadets; the women’s branch of the British Army.

The requisition had caused something of a crisis for University Accommodation, which also saw 200 cadets billeted in its other accommodation. As a result most students who kept up their studies in wartime had to stay “in digs”, with the Scotsman reporting they were now sharing 3 and 4 to a single bedroom. The hostels were quickly returned to civilian use post-war, with adverts being taken out in the local newspapers for new wardens in August 1945. Later, they became the Newington Campus of Moray House Teacher Training College, closing in 1997 when this institution merged with the University of Edinburgh. They have since been converted into private housing.

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.