Norman John Gillies - Telegraph On August 29 1930, three months after his mother's death, Norman John and the other 35 remaining islanders boarded the steamer Harebell when the government evacuated St Kilda; most would never see their birthplace again as, for the next three quarters of a century, its only occupants were conservationists and small detachments of the military. Most of the islanders were settled on the Morvern peninsula of Argyll. Norman John (who on the way there saw his first tree), his father and grandfather moved into a remote cottage at Ardness, but it flooded repeatedly and they relocated to Larachbeg, a mile from his school, where he responded in Gaelic to questions in English. Leaving at the age of 14, he worked in a sawmill, in a sand pit, and with the Forestry Commission until being conscripted into the Royal Navy in 1943, one of three St Kildans to serve in the Second World War. Trained at Skegness and at Ayr, he was assigned to a motor torpedo boat patrolling the Channel from Felixstowe. Stationed briefly at Ostend, he was back at Felixstowe for V-E Day, when the MTBs took the surrender of two E-boats and escorted them into port. After signals training at HMS Ganges, when he met his future wife, he served on signal stations at Alexandria and Port Said. After serving briefly in a minesweeper based at Trieste, he was demobilised in September 1945 and settled at Chelmondiston, Suffolk, where he became manager of a builders" merchant, retiring in 1993. St Kilda was never out of Gillies's thoughts. He first returned in 1976 (with a National Trust for Scotland working party) by boat from Oban, an 18-hour crossing during which most of the passengers were seasick. He went back in 1980 with his wife and six other St Kildans for the 50th anniversary of the evacuation, making the voyage from Benbecula in eight hours. He went twice more in 2005, first with the presenter Ben Fogle to make a Countryfile programme for the BBC, and to contribute his recollections to a moving documentary on Radio Four; this journey was in Orca, a high-speed boat which now offers something like a regular summer service from Harris. The second trip was by helicopter from Benbecula to mark the 75th anniversary of the evacuation, and took just 23 minutes. The same weekend, Scotland's Tourism Minister Patricia Ferguson unveiled a plaque on St Kilda commemorating the evacuation and St Kilda's nomination as a World Heritage Site. His first cousin, Rachel Johnson, who is 91, is now the last survivor of the evacuees from St Kilda. Norman John Gillies married, in 1948, Ivy Knights, who survives him with their two daughters and one son. Norman John Gillies, born May 22 1925, died September 29 2013