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Sheriffmuir Atlantic Wall 111
associated with the practice works to provide defensive flanking covering fire,
perhaps with mortars or smoke, as it was being attacked.
Offensive Positions
The positions from which the defensive works were fired on lie immediately
to the west of the public road, although fire may also have come from further
afield. The locations of at least six gun emplacements are marked by hollows
measuring up to about 10 m in diameter (one lies off Figure 2 to the west); a
pronounced break of slope within some of the hollows may mark the original
position of a revetment around the interior. Their disposition does not appear
to relate to the ‘Atlantic Wall’ and they may date to earlier in WW II. The main
positions from which the Wall was assaulted probably lay along a graded
access track, which is clearly visible on aerial photographs (Figure 1), leading
off from the public road and running roughly parallel to the Wall and trenches.
This sinuous track may also be taken to represent the shoreline across which
troops participating in ‘dryshod-exercises’ disembarked. Aerial photography
(Figures 1 and 5) shows the ground at the south end of the track churned up
by tracked vehicles, possibly tanks, which must have been manoeuvring here
as well as firing on the Wall. Spaced along the west side of the track are a series
of low turf mounds, mostly occurring in groups of three, and set about 5 m
apart. Each mound measures about 1.5 m in length by 0.5 m across, and lies at
right angles to the line of track, orientated towards the defensive works. These
may have been markers to position field artillery, which could be returned to
the same location reasonably accurately. Some mounds lie beside graded
platforms, visible most clearly on aerial photography (Figure 1, shown as open
rectangles on Figure 2), which may have been intended to simulate landing
craft from which troops could ‘land’ on the ‘beach’; equally they may have
provided level stances for tanks or other artillery firing on the defensive works.
Conclusion
While the main objectives of the majority of these features appears to have
been training exercises for the assault in Normandy, it is also clear that there
were several phases of construction. As we have seen, the trenches linking the
concrete bunkers to the gun emplacements on the hillside to the south-east cut
other elements of the trench-system, and it is equally clear that one of the
tracks visible on the 1946 aerial photograph (Figure 1), leading from the public
road up to the blockhouse, perhaps bringing building materials into this end of
the site, is cut by the anti-tank ditch. Close examination of the 1946 aerial
photograph (Figure 1) reveals that the northern sector of the main trenchsystem
appears fuzzy in comparison with those to the south, and therefore
being of somewhat earlier date. Accordingly, it should be concluded that the
area was used as a training ground at various stages in the war, on the one
hand for minor exercises, represented by trenches and gun emplacements, and
on the other for the major set-piece landing exercises that were to determine
the outcome of the war.