Arctic Convoy Memorial, Lyness, Hoy, Orkney
Posted in History, Museums, War Memorials at 20:13 on 13 August 2017
Almost the first thing you notice making your way out of the ferry terminal at Lyness on Hoy, apart from the last remaining oil tank servicing what was the naval base there and the building housing the Lyness Naval Museum is two flags and two upright stone markers.
This is the Arctic Convoy Memorial. Some of the convoys’ ships sailed from Scapa Flow.
Memorial from road:-
Memorial Plaza:-
Memorial Dedication:-
Russian Inscription and Flag. (I note that the flag, strictly, should be that of the USSR):-
Russian inscription:-
British Inscription and Flag:-
British Inscription:-
Tags: Arctic Convoy Memorial, Hoy, Lyness, Lyness Naval Museum, Orkney, Scapa Flow, Second World War, USSR, War Memorials, World War 2, WW2, WWII
David Loutit
31 December 2017 at 09:28
Strange that there should be two typos in the Russian text of the memorial inscription. Scapa gets written as Скаиа (Skaia) instead of Скапа and an extra letter has crept into the Russian word for always – всегда, which has been spelt всегдеа.
This leads me to suspect that there may have been minimal Russian involvement in the creation of this memorial (in line, perhaps, with that country’s notorious reluctance to acknowledge the vital assistance the convoys provided and subsequent lack of gratitude? I hope I’m wrong.)
jackdeighton
31 December 2017 at 19:17
David,
I’ll need to bow to your knowledge of Russian. Mine extends only to da, nyet, Shotlandya, spasibo, do svidanya, zdravstvuyte and ресторан for restaurant.
It’s odd that whoever wrote the incsription didn’t get it right; you’d think they would have checked it.
As for Russian involvement in the memorial, their mythology of the Great Patriotic War doesn’t allow much for other opponents of Hitler, the same way ours of standing alone doesn’t acknowledge that without US help we couldn’t possibly have made a success of any kind of D-Day landing and that the bulk of the Wehrmacht was destroyed on the Eastern Front.
Thanks for looking in and commenting.