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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Mairi Campbell of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ on behalf of Frances Ruby Coull and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

It was July 1940 I was busy making raspberry jam when we hear the sound of a plane overhead, we knew it was a German plane, they had a different sounds from ours, then minutes later a different sound, three of ‘our’ spitfires were after the enemy, they shot it down about a mile from our village over the sea. Three of our fisherman manned a fishing boat and went out and rescued the pilot but he was shot through the head. He was taken away by the Air Force and I think he was buried in Dyce (Aberdeenshire).

We hadn’t had rain for weeks but that day it had poured down. We were all soaked, running through the fields to see what was going on in the sea. We think he had been dropping mines in the sea on the shipping lanes.

While my husband was away in the Royal Navy I worked on a farm in the house and in the fields when needed, coming one day there was an almighty bang, we knew afterwards that two mines had exploded after colliding in the bay. All our windows were blown out and all the slates of all hour roofs, nobody was injured but one old man was carrying pails of water from the village pump (no mod cons at that time!) his bonnet was blown off his head. That same night I was visiting my parents, who had a croft at the back of the village, we were having a game of cards when we hear explosions and father made us all get on our knees below the big kitchen table, the dog thought it was a great game and kept licking all our faces. An old man about a mile up the road had been seeing to his animals and was carrying a lantern which the enemy had seen, he wasn’t hurt but his fireside was blown to the middle of the floor.

The cottages where I live look right out to the North Sea and I often watched for the convoys sailing past. They were our merchant shipping, with a destroyer along with them. One such night there was a lot of activity on the sea and we saw one boat on fire. We were so scared we fled down to my parents in our night attire; they thought we were the Germans invading. As my parents had spare bedrooms, we had air men billeted with us. They manned a flashing light up on the hill two miles from here at Kinneff. That light was to distract the enemy planes away from our ships making them believe it was a lighthouse, the air men moved to different places every week. They shared their rations with us as we did with them. We had milk, butter, and eggs aplenty. The lighthouse only flashed when there was a convoy passing. Its still flashing to this day, I count the flashes when in bed.

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