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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Vijiha Bashir, at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Scotland on behalf of A.F.Stoddard Carpet Factory Staff of 1940 from Elderslie, Renfrewshire and has been added to the site with the permission of Johnstone History Society. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Teenage Memories of Clydebank Blitz

It was a time in 1941 that Tom Walker as a fifteen year old witnessed the ‘Clydebank Blitz’. Young as he was, Tom was not an observer. Standing on the roof of the Stoddard’s Factory, Elderslie after his first day’s work, Tim was already on duty as a fire watcher. He recalls the moment vividly, the clear night almost cloudless and the terrible fires. It was routine for all factories to have fire watchers and Stoddard’s, like many others, had their fire watchers’ hut on the roof. Against the bombs they wore steel helmets for protection which Tom recalls had holes drilled in them round the brim. The bombing lasted for two nights.

Doubtless Tom was being specially vigilant those nights as his father James, was not only the Company Secretary at that time, but also Chief Air Raid Warden for the area.

The War Years

Much later in the war Stoddard’s Factory did have a major fire that destroyed much of what was then called Partick Bank. At that stage Stoddard’s was one of the largest laundries in the country, servicing the Life Jackets and Blankets from the ships’ convoys returning to the Clyde. Boyant Kapok fibres used to stuff the life jackets had to be removed and teased open again. It was during this process that a spark from the machinery set alight to a mass of fibre being blown through the large pipes into storage bins. Soon that part of the factory was destroyed but there was no loss of life. The nearby offices were saved by the Fire Service.

Fire Preventation

Working on life jackets was then transferred to the Wilton sheds (demolished in 1986). Steam sprinklers were introduced and on the first day of their operation, they successfully doused another fire which would probably have removed the remainder of the factory had it taken hold. Tom by this time had joined the Navy, was in the Pacific as a Wireless Telegrapher and probably hoped that his Kapok Life Jacket was up to Stoddard’s normal BS 5750 standards.

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