1
When Churchill Slaughtered Sheep
On a blustery July morning in 1943, a strange kerfuffle could be seen taking place on the shores of Gruinard Bay on the west coast of Scotland. A group of men, some in army uniform, were attempting to herd dozens of sheep into a landing craft. After much effort, the sheep were finally loaded and the little boat set sail for low-lying Gruinard Island.
The island lay approximately half a mile offshore: it was bleak, windswept and extremely remote. It was also uninhabited, one of the principal reasons why it had been selected for an experiment so secret that not even the local crofters were allowed to know what was taking place.
Alice MacIver, a young girl at the time, found all the commotion terribly exciting: ‘There was lots of activity. It was great fun, when you remember this is a very quiet place. We just thought it was some military exercise.’
But it was not a military exercise and nor were the men soldiers. They were scientists – brilliant ones – and they had travelled to Scotland from Porton Laboratories in Wiltshire. Some, like Paul Fildes, worked for the Biological Department. Others were employed by the Chemical Defence Experimental Station. All of them knew they were playing for very high stakes: the tests to be conducted on Gruinard Island, known as X Base, had the potential to change the course of the Second World War.
Winston Churchill himself had led the discussions about using biological weapons against Nazi Germany. He had debated the subject with his chiefs of staff and come up with the germ of an idea. This idea was codenamed (with characteristically black humour) ‘Operation Vegetarian’. Churchill wanted to know if it could be possible to contaminate the German countryside with so many anthrax spores that huge numbers of livestock and people would be instantly killed.
‘It was a nasty business,’ recalls local Scottish historian Donald Macintyre, then a young lad serving in the RAF. ‘But nobody would have dreamt of making a protest. It was wartime and people wanted to show their patriotism and do their part.’
Paul Fildes and his team of biological scientists shipped eighty sheep to Gruinard Island in preparation for the tests. They also took a cameraman, whose task was to record everything that happened during those few days in July.
Once on the island, the sheep were herded into individual container crates and covered in fabric jackets. This was to ensure that they would contract the anthrax from inhalation, rather than from spores on their fleeces.
The anthrax chosen for the experiment was Vollum 14578, a highly virulent strain whose efficacy had already been demonstrated in laboratories. The principal method of dissemination was to fire the anthrax by mortar.
Fildes and his men took the extraordinary decision to remain on the island while the trials were taking place. Although they were wearing cloth overalls, rubber gloves and gas masks, they were nevertheless exposing themselves to unprecedented risk.
Once the equipment was set up and the cylinders of anthrax in position, the order was given to fire the mortar. In a matter of seconds, the charge was detonated and a highly toxic cloud began travelling on the stiff sea breeze towards the crated sheep.
At first, they showed no sign of having been infected. Fildes and his team were surprised to watch the sheep chewing on the stubbly grass, seemingly unaffected by the vast quantities of anthrax that had been blown in their direction. But on the third day after the experiment they suddenly began to die, keeling over as if they had been struck by paralysis. Within hours of the first death, almost the entire flock had succumbed to the anthrax. Only those at the extreme fringes of the field – and therefore exposed to limited doses – survived the experiment.
Fildes and his men were stunned by the efficacy of Vollum 14578. They realized that a mass detonation of anthrax over Germany would cause death on an unprecedented scale. But they were also alarmed by their inability to decontaminate Gruinard Island in the aftermath of the experiment. Once the anthrax spores had settled on the land, they proved impossible to remove. Even their contaminated clothes had to be burned, since washing them did not remove the anthrax.
An additional scare came when an unexpected storm swept one of the sheep carcasses over to the mainland. It instantly infected other livestock, leading to a secret cull of sheep and a swift payment of compensation to the local farmer.
Donald Macintyre was bemused by the speed with which the compensation was paid. ‘It’s not often that you put in a complaint and get paid straightaway.’
The virulence of the anthrax was to prove both its strength and its weakness. Churchill was alarmed by the way it spread so uncontrollably and the project was temporarily put on hold.
But by the spring of 1944, anthrax was back on the agenda. After a series of meetings with his military advisers, Churchill approved an order for an initial stockpile of 500,000 anthrax bombs. He stressed that he would only give the order for a biological strike on Germany in retaliation for a similar attack on Britain. ‘If our enemies should indulge in this form of warfare,’ he said, ‘the only deterrent would be our power to retaliate.’
The Inter-Service Sub-Committee on Biological Warfare noted that the initial anthrax order ‘was based on an appreciation that the number would be sufficient for retaliatory attacks on six large enemy cities’. But after prolonged deliberation, they dramatically increased the quantity of anthrax.
‘It has now been concluded that it may be necessary to arrange provision of eight times this number of bombs in order to achieve results on the scale originally envisaged.’
The production of the initial order took time – far longer than the experts had expected. ‘The plant for manufacturing the filling of the bombs [with anthrax] should be in operation by the end of the year [1944]. We could not, therefore, engage in this form of warfare on any effective scale before the spring of 1945.’
By the time the first bombs were ready, a secret report to a Cabinet Defence Committee revealed that even deadlier anthrax weapons were being trialled. These had the potential to reduce Germany to an uninhabitable wasteland.
‘Judging by its effect on monkeys,’ reads the report, ‘[it] might kill half the population of a city of the size of Stuttgart in one heavy bomber raid and render the site of the city uninhabitable for many years to come. It is clear, therefore, that biological warfare is potentially a most deadly weapon and, if it is ever used in warfare, may have revolutionary effects.’
But the end of the war was now in sight and a new deadly weapon, the atomic bomb, was in development. Anthrax was no longer required and the biological weapons project was quietly shelved.
As for Gruinard Island, it was so badly contaminated that it was proclaimed off-limits. Locals were warned not to set foot on the island and ‘Keep Out’ signs were erected all around the foreshore. The island was to remain out of bounds until 1990, when the removal of the topsoil and spraying of the island with formaldehyde solution finally rendered it safe.
There is still no one living on the island. These days, the only inhabitants are a flock of sheep who munch on the grass, blissfully unaware of the deadly spores that until recently infected their island home.
Copyright © 2016 by Giles Milton
