大象传媒

At Greenock, the Tate and Lyle sugar refinery had already been bombed that night and the blaze was so ferocious that it lit up the sky for miles and all the way up the Clyde. This meant that the German bombers were easily visible. There was one bomber loaded with a landmine on each wing. The weight of the mines caused the planes to be unable to fly high in the sky. To escape the gunfire the plane turned inland at Paisley in order for the crew to unload the mines. These came down on parachutes. The ropes on the parachute of one of them became caught up in the trees surrounding the First Aid post. The mine came down on the roof of the building and a tremendous explosion occurred.

There were around 105 people killed!
These included doctors, nurses, ambulance personnel, rescue workers, air raid wardens, and all the personnel who were there to help, should a bombing have occcured.

Meanwhile in our shelter, hearing the drone of a bomber overhead- which was unusual, my father had opened the door to peep out at the sky just at the moment the explosion occured. He told us afterwards that the door was blown off its hinges. As he was holding onto the door at the time he flew through the air with it and was lucky not to be killed or badly injured as he hit the wall at the other end of the yard.

Inside the shelter we were completely stunned - it was like being awake and unconscious at the same time. Our heads felt as if they had swelled to twice their normal size, our eyes, nostrils and mouths were full of dirt and grit and we were completely disorientated. I have no idea how long it took for us to come back to reality. Fortunately the spirit lamp had smashed and gone out or we might all have caught alight.

This all occured in darkness in the blackout. I don't know whether it was noises in my head from the effect of the blast, but when I returned to reality I thought I was hearing screams and cries because it seemed no-one in the first aid post could have survived for any length of time, if at all. The post was only fifty yards away from our shelter.

It was not until daylight that the demolition squad and other helpers came in to the street from other parts of the town.(In the geography books of that time Paisley was described as the largest industrial town in Britain).

A warden encountered my father and told us we had to get out of the street. No 12, tenement was still standing, but every window in the building had been blown in, all the ceilings were on the floor and it was impossible to make entry. We had nothing but the clothes we stood up in. The younger of my two brothers, aged 2 and a half was in his pram. |As we emerged from the shelter my father warned us not to look up into the grounds of Woodside House, but being a child I could not resist the temptation. By this time there were rows of army type metal stretchers each with a wrapped corpse upon it.

My father went to see the condition of the Crown Bar, the windows there were all blown in and he contacted his employer who came down from his home outside Eldereslie and they arranged boarding up of the bar. In those days people were honest and not a single drop of liquor or bottle of beer had been stolen. Mr Young. my father's employer took us all to their home for the rest of the day where we could get washed and have a meal. He later brought us back to my grandmother's house (another tenement). That meant four children, my father and mother, grandmother and one aunt were all housed with only three recessed beds, however these beds were so large that you could sleep four children in one of them!

What my mother did was to go down to the post at Saltcoats which had been free of air attacks and hire half or a bungalow for 3 months for us to live in.

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