大象传媒

The War started on 3rd September, 1939, and really my friends and myself did not realise the implications this would mean. Living in Rosyth at the time we were very much in a vulnerable area. We had the Rosyth Dockyard and a Royal Navy Armaments Depot at Crombie, near Rosyth. Also, suddenly a place we used to go to as children called Pitreavie Castle near Dunfermline was closed up and there was supposed to be something very hush-hush going on in this estate.

Children were to be evacuated and it was arranged I go to my grandparents in Kirriemuir. However, we all decided we wanted to stay with our parents.

I had started in August at Dunfermline High School but when the war started, we had only three weeks off for air raid shelters to be built. I was very disappointed, as most of my friends had been going to Kings Road Secondary in Rosyth and this was commandeered, as was Park Road Primary School for the Navy and R.A.F. They were several months without education and then for a while went to people's houses.

We had air raids very early in the war. Once we watched a German plane with the swastika. They tried to bomb the Forth Rail Bridge and a painter who was on the bridge thought his last day had come. At that time they bombed, but did not destroy, a ship in the docks.

Air raids became very frequent near the beginning of the war. Anderson shelters were built, called after a Mr. Anderson, and situated in the garden. They were made of corrugated iron. Every one did not have one. Our next door neighbour had one and this was shared with his neighbour on the other side as well. We would crawl through the hedge when the siren went. My mother made me trousers out of a tartan rug and she took my slipper case with what she called her "private affairs" and things to make a hot drink. The night of the Clydebank bombing was horrendous, with planes going over and the noise of the guns were terrible. It was thought a great thing if you had a piece of shrapnel. I carried one around in my case, which was very heavy, for many a day in case my mother flung it out, but eventually she found it.

My uncle was in the R.A.F. for a few years before the war, so my mother thought my aunt and grandmother who stayed in Edinburgh should come and stay with us. My aunt travelled to Edinburgh by train every day and my job was to go up to Rosyth Halt, a fair distance away, each night with my grandmother and my fox terrier dog "Boy" to meet my aunt in pitch darkness.

Another job I had with my dog was going to collect my mother from a grocer's shop, which she managed for a customer of my father's whose manager had been in the territorials and was called up right away, leaving only a teenage boy and girl. My mother was hopeless in the blackout - she banged into sandbags, which were erected to protect shop windows.

My father was a Sergeant Special Constable and was kept busy, as they had to patrol the docks frequently to make sure everything was in order.

It seems funny seeing the odd barrage balloon now advertising some business. Barrage balloons were all round the Forth Rail Bridge to protect it from the enemy.

My mother insisted my gas mask went everywhere with me in a brown cardboard box and a string over my shoulder. When I tried it on as an exercise, I felt I would choke.

My friends thought we would like to do something for the war effort and held a street concert party. One garden to change, one to perform, and one for the audience and the money we raised was to buy cigarettes for any of our relations at war. My uncle received cigarettes and sent me a drawing of his plane and his position. How proud I was. Sadly, although my uncle should have been grounded for a while, he volunteered to go up as there were few trained air crew, and he was killed in 1941 in an attempt to bomb the Scharnhorst.

We were back in Dundee by this time. Dundee was let off quite lightly, with just a few bombs dropped. Little did we think at that time the war would last till 1945 and my mother would be working on 6lb shells in a munitions factory.

Irene N. Dowie (Mrs.). via Dundee Central Library

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