大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Catherine Garvie, Learning Project Manager at 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of the Greenock War Detectives project and has been added with their permission. The authors fully understand the site's terms and conditions.

I started school in 1940, aged 5. We all had to wear these wee boxes with gas masks in them. Everybody had one and even wee babies had a special gas mask. You had to carry these gas masks with you where you went, pictures or anywhere at all. Every now and again you would get siren drill in school and we all had to rush to our wee boxes and see how quickly we could get our gas masks on. Nobody could ever do it in the time we were supposed to. Just trying to get the things on was torture because they had to be worn so tight. I think if there was a gas attack during the war we wouldn鈥檛 be here because it took us ages to get the masks on and even when you did manage they steamed up and you couldn鈥檛 see a thing. Nobody could hear what you were talking about either because your voice would be all muffled from the gas mask.

We had a big communal shelter. Can you imagine being hauled out of your bed at three in the morning to go to the shelter? It could be so cold in the middle of the night and you鈥檇 just be in your pyjamas, so it was really rough going. One night I remember we all piled into this big communal shelter and everybody was all bent over because they were terrified and half the women were crying because it was really frightening. We could hear all these big bangs, the guns going off and bombs dropping. There was one particular big blast and it really shook us up and my mother said, oh I think that鈥檚 our house away because it was a terrible bang but we were lucky it didn鈥檛 touch the house. It was a really, really bad time. Sometimes after an air raid I鈥檇 go down the town the next day and look at all the damage done from the previous night.

Most of the tenements had baffle walls built outside them to prevent any blast going up inside the close. During the blackout you couldn鈥檛 see a thing because it was so dark and people would bump into the baffle walls an awful lot. You weren鈥檛 allowed to show any light at all and if you used a torch when you walked outside, you鈥檇 have to just shine it a down onto the ground, just enough to see where your feet were going. It was the same in the house; you had to be really careful not to show any light. If my father has a little look outside the window during a blackout my mother would shout at him to get the blind down.

My mother took charge of the ration books and just as well she did otherwise we would have been in danger of eating all our sweetie rations in one night! She used to give us a few a day and that helped stretch them out to a week. We were allowed one egg each a week and we kept this for our Sunday breakfast - a boiled egg with a bit of toast and a mug of tea. After the war some things were still rationed and I didn鈥檛 see my first banana until the war ended. I鈥檇 heard about them from my father and they used to fascinate me.

When the war ended there was big celebrations. It was such a good feeling to know that you could come and go when you pleased and didn鈥檛 need any big blackout curtains on the windows. You didn鈥檛 have to worry anymore about when the sirens might go off so things were a bit more relaxed and happy.

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