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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Vijiha Bashir, at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland on behalf of Katie Smith from Paisley and has been added to the site with the permission of Johnstone History Society. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I recently attended a lecture on marine conservation and the young man (he was young to me), was expansive on the beauty of our shore corals and marine life. In particular he detailed the Lochgoilhead area and I was reminded of my own childhood attendance at Lochgoilhead Public School and the frequent dire warnings of ‘not under any circumstances to touch anything on the beach’. The authorities tested depth charges in Loch Goil in the early 1940’s and many unexploded shells were washed up on the tide line.

My family resided in Paisley and I barely started in infant class of Paisley Grammar School. Do you remember the days of school bag over the shoulder and gas mask over the other? It must have been difficult for mothers the part with their children even for just a few hours, especially if the night before had been spent in an air raid shelter when the siren sounded and the tension of waiting for the drone of the aircraft and the relief when the all clear was heard.

We were ‘posh’ and had an indoor shelter. A large reinforcement metal cage that occupied one room and into which we infants were lifted from our beds and put on mattresses to try to sleep but the nervous strain of the women transmitted to the children and the sense of excitement and apprehension made it almost impossible. Husbands and fathers were rarely present as they were away I other duties, either the Forces or other war work such as Fire Watching, Police, Wardens, etc, on top of their normal days employment.

The Clyde estuary was virtually the only ‘comparatively safe’ harbour in Europe being at the limit of the range for the Luftwaffe and American Forces were landing in their thousands every week after their hazardous sail across the Atlantic. The railway line from Greenock to Glasgow and the route outwards to the South was a prime target despite many Barrage Balloons floating in the sky to deter air strikes and the dummy airport, constructed out of plywood on top of the Braes to fool the enemy navigators into adjusting their altimeters and location finders away from the areas of dense population. The Rolls Royce Factory at Hillington on 24 hours 7 days a week production of Ball Bearings and Aero Engines was also a magnet to our night time visitors.

Whether before or after the terrible carnage of the Clydebank Blitz I do not remember, but I suspect it was after that destruction a ‘stray’ bomb exploded the footbridge over the railway line between Kelburn Cricket ground and Gallowhill resulted in the shattering of our window, heavily taped with black criss-cross binding to prevent flying splinters. This was when my mother decided to decamp to stay with her sister in Lochgoilhead, taking myself and my baby brother. The small ferry boat called ‘Comet’- No, not the original one, to the pier at Loch Goil sailed from Greenock or it may have been Wembyss Bay to avoid the boom across the Clyde that acted as a deterrent to submarines. I have a clear mental picture of and elderly seaman carrying the baby up the steep gangplank as my mother and I struggled with the pram piled high with our belongings.

My aunt owned the only shop in the village and we all lived in the flat above. The shop had three separate areas. One a former clothing store, long closed but finished with dusty long cheval mirrors and bits and pieces of early thirties style dresses and hats, an Aladdin’s cave for a young girl to play dressing up! The main middle section as the grocery with barrels of butter from which rations were carefully measured and battered into shape with wooden butter pats, stored in a large brown jar filled with water, before wrapping in greaseproof paper. Cheese was cut on a large board with a wire cutter. The third area was as I remember the Post Office from which o was barred. Out the back was a former bake house with all sorts of interesting patty tins and shaped utensils and old fashioned ovens. Probably overrun with mice but there were plenty of acts around and an ideal playing area.

My pride and joy was a blackboard with ‘Melrose Tea’ emblazoned in large letters on the top.

Attendance at the local school was mandatory where two teachers instructed all form 5 — 14 years in the two rooms. There were 3 of us in the infants, a boy from London, a far out relation of mine who had been bombed out and stayed elsewhere in the village and my bosom pal, a little girl who lived somewhere out in the hills. I now realise she was a tinker child which accounted for my suffering through hair washing every night! I don’t know how teachers cope with various groups in one class but since our trio could not work on our own as the older children could, we benefited fro almost individual tuition and when I returned to Paisley Grammar several months later I was certainly well advanced in my ‘times table’, etc.

I have a little recollection of other detail at the school but have never forgotten this poem,

Of all the colours God has made
I love the pretty yellow shade
The colour of Canaries wings
Of Baby Ducks and fluffy things
I think He must have spilled the Sun
Upon the darlings, everyone

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