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Nancy Cutliffe: Scottish war story

I was thirteen when war broke out. I had gone to school on the Friday the 1st of September and war was announced on the third of September. At the beginning everything was very chaotic. The schools closed down, and many, many children from Glasgow were evacuated and of course it was all arranged hurriedly. We waited and vans came, usually on a Sunday and collected children from outside their homes. I didn鈥檛 go. I didn鈥檛 want to go because I was thirteen but my two brothers were evacuated. One of my brothers was evacuated to Crawfordjohn, a small place in Lanarkshire. It was a retired couple. The husband had been a shepherd all his life. My brother was well treated. He and another little boy were billeted with this couple and they were very well treated. Living in the country they had good food, better food than we had in town and they had the freedom. My brother has always loved the country from that time. But my other brother was sent up to someone in Perth and it鈥檚 hard to say it after so many years. But he wasn鈥檛 so well treated.

Many children were fortunate where they were billeted but some people took children in for the allowance. The parents all had to pay so much a week for each child that was evacuated and some were not really very well looked after. One wee boy came back who lived near us and when his mum collected him towards the end of the war he looked as if he hadn鈥檛 much longer to live. He was so gaunt and so dreadfully ill. So much so that my mum and all the neighbours round about tried to give share of anything they had, rationed or unrationed. He was very unlucky. His two sisters had been evacuated and they were fine. A happy evacuation depended on the type of people who took you in and I know of many instances where children were, not cruelly treated but not well looked after. There was my brother and the wee boy with him and I know of some girls who were very well treated. It was a matter of luck where you got your billet.

Those who were not evacuated were literally months and months without education and I was one of them . The school did re-open a couple of months before |I was fourteen but only for two hours a day. We all thought we were grown up we hadn鈥檛 been at school for a while and most of my friends and I began our working career when we were fourteen. The first year or so nothing drastic happened where I lived. Our house was quite near what had been the Singer sewing-machine factory so of course munitions were being made there.

Time went on and all of a sudden the air-raids started. There were many air-raids. I lived on the top of a hill, Gilshoch Hill in the north of Glasgow and we鈥檇 be fine and the siren would go and off you would go to the shelter. They built shelters. People who had a semi-detached or detached house got an Anderson shelter. We had a flat so there was a huge brick shelter in the back garden and as soon as you heard the air-raid warning we would all go down and sit in this shelter till the all-clear. That went on for a while.

Then on one particular night they were really trying to bomb Clydebank and they did in fact practically raze it to the ground. During that night a landmine dropped near where we lived. And it destroyed a huge school, it floated over and hit the top part of our local church and destroyed it and it landed in a very congested street. Well over a hundred people were killed, and nearly two hundred injured in that one street alone. So our own house and the houses round about were all shattered and for many years we had no glass in the windows. You patched a bag of canvas and it鈥檚 amazing how one got used to these things.

I remember too the rationing. The rationing was very, very strict at the beginning. We鈥檙e talking about one egg per person per week. Or we鈥檙e talking about five pence in money of meat per person per week. That was a shillings worth. It was fantastic some of the things our mums thought to do. Radishes were bought and cooked and flavoured so that they would taste like banana and we used that in sandwiches. Dried egg if you could get it but you had to queue up for it. When you got dried egg you tried to make an omelette or something with it. That was quite a treat. But it was in the early stage of the war, the second year or maybe just into the third year, things were really bad.

My own father who was a qualified shipwright but had been doing other work, he then volunteered to work on the boats along with the other men of his age. It was dreadful. We were not sufficiently prepared to fight at that time and my dad used to be so unhappy coming home because he knew that the boats were merely patched up and he said he was worried about the sailors going out to sail in them never mind fight the enemy. He worked many hours. I鈥檝e known my father to work a day, a night and a day only with a break for a flask of tea here and there, not to go home and not to get sleeping. That鈥檚 how bad it was in the early years.

Things got better and eventually we were ready to retaliate. But the bombing went on. We were quite fortunate to stay in the part of Glasgow we did because apart from ten days solid bombing every night early on we didn鈥檛 get much towards the end of the war.

I was thirteen when war broke out. I was nineteen when the war ended. I didn鈥檛 know at the time that I worked in a trade union office and I learned afterwards that the trade union offices and the political offices were exempt from call-up. But towards the end of the war, about two months before, I decided to get a better job and I did. And off I went to the labour exchange to get my green card, where I was told that as I had left work I was now the property of the Ministry of Labour and I was offered a job working on the tramcars or in the land army. I would have liked, early on in the war, I wouldn鈥檛 have minded, I would have quite enjoyed being in one of the forces but we all knew the war was more or less coming to a close and I was a very thin teenager so that to work in the Land army was really out of the question and my doctor came to my rescue so I wasn鈥檛 actually called up.

When it was over we danced in the street, we made huge bonfires with the wooden doors from the shelters it was really fantastic because all of a sudden we could see the streets, we could see the lights and as we lived in a hilly place we went away up to the top of the hill to watch the celebrations and we could see all over Glasgow the bonfires and the lights because during the war of course we had all to have blackout material and so on. The clothing coupons were a bit of a nuisance too because if you bought a coat for the winter that meant you had no dress no shoes. It more or less used up your supply of coupons. Some of us would make maybe a skirt of blackout material and sew braid on to it for a bit of colour. It was amazing. All over we used to have wee do-it-yourself sessions in each others houses and make-and-mend and change things over. I remember I had a kilt, Royal Ancient McIntyre tartan, when I was about twelve or thirteen and that was patiently ripped out seam by seam and used to make a skirt. I wasn鈥檛 the only one, We all did it. We had to if we wanted to get anything in the way of clothing.

There was a shortage of fuel during the war too. As I said, we lived up a very steep hill so in the bad weather it was difficult to get coal up and there was no other way. Coal was so short. You would think you were getting your bag of coal one week and then it wouldn鈥檛 be delivered or it wouldn鈥檛 come. But I watched from the window. I watched my own mother with a neighbour to help her pulling up a full hundredweight of coal on my brother鈥檚 sledge. And it was a very steep hill. They pulled it so far and had to rest and then so far more. Ant then they had to carry that coal in pails up two flights of stairs so that we could have heat. And we thought that night was wonderful because we had the warmth and the glow of a good coal fire.

Before the war there was a lot of coming and going between Ireland and Glasgow but that was curtailed during the war years. You couldn鈥檛 just travel anywhere. I was young then but even for a long time after the war you had to queue up at the office for a sailing ticket or you couldn鈥檛 get on the boat. And you had to go whichever day there was a space available. You couldn鈥檛 just go down to the office and say, 鈥淚 want to go to Ireland on Wednesday.鈥� Because it might be the Tuesday of the following week before you would be allowed a sailing ticket.

There were many Irish people in Glasgow during the war. I would even say it was predominantly Irish. Where I lived in Maryhill there was a church, it was a good church and was very well attended. But one side of that church, was called, it was never anything else, it was called 鈥渢he Donegal side鈥�. As a young girl I had never heard it called anything but 鈥渢he Donegal side鈥� and when I was younger I thought every church had a Donegal side. As you went into the church it was the right hand side and I have a recollection that there must have been a lot of young Irishmen come over for work because I can remember looking over and there seemed to be a lot of young men. They were all much of a likeness. Maryhill was very Irish. Also, at the top of our hill, we stayed up at the top of Gilship Hill, there was a whole lot of young Irish. One would come and live and then send for somebody else and so on. And other parts of Glasgow were even more Irish than where we stayed in Maryhill.

I had four Irish grandparents. My father was born on a farm just outside Letterkenny. My grandfather was from Rathmullan. On the other side, my mother鈥檚, they came originally from Belfast and had come over for work. My grandfather Morrison also came over for work and of course there were the shipyards at Clydeside and he worked on the boats and sent money home to my grandmother. She had six children. I think another two were born in Ireland before they decided it would be easier for everyone if they moved to Scotland. So they moved to a place called Port Glasgow where there was a great deal of shipbuilding. They were there in Port Glasgow till they died.

The reason I came back to Inishowen, of course it was after the war, was that my father hadn鈥檛 been back for many years and he wanted to trace his family. I think he felt he should have relations in Newtowncunningham and he wanted to see the farm. And I came over with my father and mother to Buncrana. I would have been twentythree by that time. The war had been over four years. So we got over with our sailing tickets and that鈥檚 how I started coming back and forward to Inishowen. I hadn鈥檛 been in Buncrana before that time but I just fell in love with the place.

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