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This story was submitted to the People's War website by Susie, on behalf of Iris. Iris fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was evacuated from Edinburgh to Fife the day before war was declared. I was only 11 and my mother didn’t know where I was being sent as it was very hush hush. The school was split up by class, and I was sent away with one or two of my friends, with only one adult to so many children.

We arrived in a town hall, wee gasmasks in tow, and the family we were meant to stay with refused to take us. Instead, three maiden ladies took us in, and although we only ended up staying a short while we saw more fighting in Fife than we ever would have in Edinburgh!

Where we were staying was right on the coast and as a result dogfights with the Germans would take place right above us, as we were directly on the route they wanted to take to get to the Forth Bridge and Rosyth. We would be in the playground looking up until the teachers took us back inside — it was great fun!

Back home in Edinburgh a lot of male teachers were away at war now so they couldn’t open the schools. We went to people’s houses to learn, and the teacher would go there. They brought back retired teachers to hold the fort as teaching was not a reserved occupation. We basically received a part time education though it was important we kept up, it didn’t affect us too much as our parents kept up with our homework. Edinburgh didn’t get bombed as much as Glasgow. We heard the planes going over that time and wondered where they were going. The next morning we got up and discovered it was Clydebank.

My father had been in World War 1 and was very proud to be back in uniform. He joined the Home Guard and piped the parade on a Sunday. My uncle ran away and we couldn’t find him anywhere. We eventually discovered he’d joined the ‘London Scottish’, but with silver plate in his head and shrapnel in his arm from the first war they rumbled him in a week!

My memories of VE day are of being in Princes Street, singing, shouting, dancing and laughing. I was fifteen or sixteen by that time. I remember my friend’s fathers coming home. When I married, my husband had been through a lot in the Atlantic and Burma. He had been torpedoed and couldn’t watch the film ‘Titanic’.

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