大象传媒

I was eleven years old when War was declared on September 3rd 1939 and I remember hearing Neville Chamberlains broadcast at 11am on that Sunday morning to the nation. Life did not change greatly at first other than my School was closed and we were taught in various private houses until the School Air Raid shelters were constructed.

These shelters were a system of trenches dug on the School Tennis Courts. Once they were completed the School re-assembled in the buildings and a system of Air-Raid practices were introduced. School life returned to as near normal except that a number of Masters had left for the Services, most of them being T.A. Soldiers.

Rationing was difficult for my Mother as were quite a large household and my Father had joined the Royal Observer Corps in the Central Control Room in Glasgow City Centre.

We were fairly lucky with Air-Raids until 1942 when Glasgow was visited on two consecutive nights when the Clyde dockyards and Ship Building Yards were targeted. The first night, Thursday, was very bad as Glasgow were not well defended by Anti Aircraft Guns from the East-Coast and the cruiser H.M.S. Sheffield was brought up the Clyde to be just below Yorkhill Children's Hospital.

The other thing I remember was going to School on the Friday morning and being sent home as there were only five boys out of some five hundred boys attending.

We managed as best we could with rationing, the Black Out and all the other things like seeing Soldiers from the Allies and the Commonwealth. In 1944 I became an A.R.P Messenger boy with a tin helmet, arm band and bicycle. Various practices were held but we were never called out during any raids.

I was a member of the School Cadet Force, an instructor to the Local Home Guard in Drill & Skill at Arms.

These are some of my memories of my life as a School Boy in Glasgow during World War Two.

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