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The Shetland ‘Bus’ was an operation to transport secret agents to and from Norway, initially using Norwegian fishing boats whose crews had used them to escape to Britain, and later three American sub-catchers, which proved to be much more effective.
For me the book would have benefited from being more focused. The chapters on the German invasion of Norway and the setting up of SOE cover information that is already readily available. Some material on these topics was probably needed, but not quite this much.
Chapter four serves as a brief overview of the Shetland Bus, looking at how the original improptue arrangement which saw the crews of those fishing boats that reached Shetland from Norway in 1940 agree to return carrying agents, turned into an official organisation early in 1941. A series of key events in the history of the bus are traced, before a summary tells us how many missions were carried out, agents and refugees transported and men lost.
The final three chapters are the most valuable. Chapter five looks at the Norwegians agents who operated against the Germans, and contains a large number of fairly short biographies (at most a page or two, some of them just a paragraph). Chapter six looks at the Allied operations carried out in Norway, mainly a series of commando raids planned from Britain. Some of these were famously succesful but others serve as a vivid reminder of just how dangerous these missions were, with more than one boat being lost with all of its passengers and crew. Chapter seven focuses on those boats and their crews, with each section focusing on an individual, their boat, and one key incident (although also normally tracing the history of both before and after that incident).
The structure of this book makes it feel more like a reference work than a narrative, with the three most important chapters built around a large number of fairly short sections. As a result we get to read about more of the individuals who were involved in these dangerous missions, although perhaps at the cost of a longer narrative account of the Bus.
Chapters
1 – Shetland’s Role in the Second World War
2 – The German Invasion of Norway, 1940
3 – The Setting up of the Special Operations Executive
4 – The Commencement of the Shetland Bus
5 – Norwegian Agents
6 – Allied Military Operations in Norway
7 – Boats and Men of the Shetland Bus
Author: Stephen Wynn
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 216
Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
Year: 2022