大象传媒

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

At the time I was eight years old. On 3rd September war was declared and by 10th September I and my twin sister Nancy were sent out to stay with an aunt in Carluke. We stayed until Christmas, receiving presents from uncles and aunts, then two days after Christmas our father came back and we returned to our home in Kinning Park to another set of Christmas presents!

One night I was at the cubs in a church in King鈥檚 Park. During the meeting the sirens went and everything blacked out. My father came to see if I was OK and in the darkness walked into the side of the church and burst his nose. That was the first World War 2 casualty in our family!

Some time after that during an air-raid, a German land mine was dropped on tenements in Blackburn Street by parachute. A lot of people were killed in that incident. I ended up owner of part of the parachute and part of the mine. I collected a lot of shrapnel too, and two tails of incendiary bombs as they would get caught in the gutters of tenements.

Two months later was another air raid, and this was the bombing of Clydebank. From the Plantation area of Kinning Park you could see the sky lit up.

My father was a motor mechanic and he was drafted in to work in the Rolls Royce factory in Hillington for aircraft engine manufacture. The one good thing about the war was that through dad鈥檚 job we were given a house in Cardonald by the Ministry of Aviation. So we flitted from a two-up in a tenement in Glasgow to a semi-detached five apartment house with a front and back garden鈥nd we got to stay there!

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.