大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Vijiha Bashir, at 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of David Goldie from Elderslie, Johnstone and has been added to the site with the permission of Johnstone History Society. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I well remember the night when a bomb fell in Seedhill Road Paisley. I lived in Hawkhead Road at the time. During the air-raid, the family all sat up in the living room for mutual company. This was the custom as we did not have an air raid shelter. We heard the whoosh of a bomb overhead then a crash and a dull thud. The crash was the building in Seedhill Road and the thud, from the bomb which had passed overhead and landed in Barshaw Park in front of the tea-room. From the top of the hill you can still see the ring in the grass which was the edge of the crater. The bomb that had landed in Seedhill Road was across from the warden鈥檚 post at the corner of Auchentorlie Quadrant so it was immediately known that help was required. My father, who was the head warden for the east end of the town and was out on duty, came home to see that the family were all right, then he was going to see if he could help with the rescue because two people were missing. It was, of course, the rescue service which carried out that operation. The block of buildings in Seedhill Road, between the two ends of Auchentorlie Quadrant, was known as Havelock Terrace and, like most tenement buildings in the town during the war, the closes had been reinforced, had wooden seats along their lengths and with baffle walls at the ends, this was the air raid shelter for the occupants. It seems that on this occasion, having come down to the close, the two men had gone back up to their houses for some reason, and it was during this time that the bomb, which only partly exploded, landed and demolished the flats. One of my sisters had a friend who lived in the adjacent close due to the bombing she suffered health problems for many years thereafter.

The morning after the raid, we knew that there had been a terrible attack on Clydebank. After an air raid during the night, schools closed for a day or so, being ghoulish children (1 was 13), my friend and I cycled up Arkleston Road to that point above the old Renfrew Aerodrome to see what we could see. On the way, at the T junction we saw the farmer鈥檚 field absolutely peppered with burned out incendiary bombs. The white heaps of magnesium oxide looked as though they had been planted in a neat grid.

Looking back now, I realise that as a child, though you felt afraid at times, it seemed to be an exciting adventure and you didn鈥檛 understand the enormity of the situation. And, of course, during the war, the newspapers were censored; you didn鈥檛 get all the information so that rumours started and grew as they spread.

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