With one German army regrouping before Moscow, and another capturing Kursk in the south, on 7 November Stalin addressed the Russian people for only the second time, urging them to resist the German invasion. Meanwhile British bombers launched raids on Berlin, the Ruhr and Cologne, but suffered heavy losses. And on 9 November, the Royal Navy, using intercepted intelligence information, destroyed two Italian shipping convoys.
Caithness had experienced two very different festivals in the course of the last week or so: Harvest Thanksgiving and Hallowe’en. The log book of Latheron School reads: “November 6th: Thanksgiving day for harvest.”
As the John O’Groat Journal reported, Wick Church had held its service the previous Sunday, “when the offerings 
at both services were on behalf of the poor and infirm of the congregation. The church was beautifully decorated with emblems of the harvest of land and sea”, with fruit, vegetables and foods of all kinds having been donated. There was one difference this year, however: “Local Servicemen added greatly to the beauty of the decorations by fixing up a large number of coloured electric lights artistically displayed around the pulpit and choir seats.”
As for the other festival, as the John O’Groat Journal also reported, the shortage of food, especially apples, had a significant impact. In Dunbeath, “Hallowe’en passed quite uneventfully; no mischief was done, and the usual “dooking” was conspicuous by the absence of the apples, as only a limited quantity could be obtained.”
One commentator (“Norseman”) agreed: “It is true that there would not be an abundance of 
apples for this year’s merry-making, and this would certainly be a drawback.” He concluded with words to strike terror into the heart of any supermarket managers who were reading: “But Hallowe’en has been shorn of most of what it once stood for, and in the towns at any rate it is no more than a name and a memory. In the less sophisticated rustic regions it is still observed in a more or less disjointed fashion, but even there it is also going the way towards oblivion.”
Also this week, the Director of Education took a rather laconic approach to illness at Latheronwheel School, when he wrote to the head teacher Mrs Mackay on 7 November: “I have been in touch with Dr Dick regarding the outbreak of measles and he is of the opinion that as so many of the pupils have already been affected no good purpose would be served by closing the school.” (Unfortunately the log book for this period has not survived, so there is no way of knowing how Mrs Mackay reacted to this advice.)
Finally, the food shortage was having an effect on more than just Hallowe’en, as the following announcement in the John O’Groat Journal shows: “Regret No Sweets To-morrow – The Cafeteria, Wick”
