´óÏó´«Ã½

Making something feel 'real' is half the battle with history lessons, and we've really tried to help teachers do that with our Thirty Nine 45 website. Producer Neil Scott reflects on how a personal story inspired him to unearth and piece together fragments of evidence for the website, revealing the realities of war. A story that goes back to the 6th of August 1942, just after 10.30pm, when the east coast of Scotland was attacked by three Luftwaffe planes...

I first heard about this bombing as a child, some 40 years ago. Last year I heard it again as my own son interviewed his granny for a school project about her war time experiences.

By 1942 my mother, aged ten, had just spent the best part of four years as an evacuee on a farm near Lockerbie. That summer her evacuation was brought to an end by her parents and she returned to Glasgow. Once home she was greeted with the thrilling news that her parents were immediately re-establishing their traditional holiday to the Fife coast.

For three days the holiday in St Andrews was the blissful treat it was intended to be. Within the safe boundary of the famous step rock pool my mother was taught to swim. Another family, met sitting at the pool side, was befriended and my mother's rubber ring (a precious commodity after four years of U-boat blockades) was happily shared with their own little girl. Then, one Thursday night the Luftwaffe attacked and the delicate fabric of normality that these families were trying to draw around themselves was blown away by four high explosive bombs. Fourteen people that I know of died as a result of these bombs. Amongst them was the little girl that had shared my mother's rubber ring.

As I sat watching my son listening to this story for the first time I realised that as an adult I needed to know more. I wanted to explore what could be found out about this raid today. Obviously there would be newspaper reports that I could follow up and records of fatalities that might help me trace other families caught up in it. There must be some official documentation as well. I wanted to know what the intended target in St Andrews had been that night. It certainly would not have been the boarding houses in Nelson Street that were obliterated. I also wanted to find out if there had been an RAF response to the raid.

Through my research, and really ever since these questions popped into my head, I've felt a growing sense of responsibility for this moment from WWII. So has my son. He has been delighted to see his primary school project taken on by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland and grown into something a bit bigger than he initially imagined! Coincidentally this is exactly the strategy that the new curriculum in Scotland is actively encouraging young learners and teachers to adopt. The belief is that by starting with the personal or local historical context a relevancy for learning has more chance of taking hold of the imagination and stimulating curiosity in the learner. Teachers have always known this, as have grandparents and the new curriculum is simply formalising a trusted and very natural process of learning.

If relevancy is important for learners then the study of World War Two 1939 -1945 can't escape the test. The question "why do I have to learn about this?" absolutely needs to be answered. So how does this 1942 attack on the east coast of Scotland stand that test? Well one use might be to consider the wider impact crater of the term "collateral damage". When our leaders and military commanders report incidents of collateral damage it's hard to get much understanding beyond the 30 second news report. In studying the collateral damage that occurred in St Andrews (a term only used since the late 1980s) I was much struck by just how much the pain and sense of pointless loss still affected the family members I met. Their generosity in providing us with interviews, letters of condolence and photographs from their private archives will give learners an opportunity to see how the repercussions of these bombs dropped almost 70 years ago are still with us. Can we believe that bombs causing collateral damage in Afghanistan will cause any less of a lasting impact for those families affected? Well that's one possible use. I'm hopeful that if you decide to use the content you will find many more.