大象传媒

A tune or song from the Second World War takes me back in time to my mother鈥檚 living room, and the flicker of candlelight on our old maplewood piano, where we spent long winter evenings singing 鈥� mainly, I suppose, to dispel the fears of war. My
Sister, Jean, was the talented one and played everything from Chopin to Three Blind Mice.

Three of my older sisters sang in St Andrew鈥檚 Church choir and later on, as the war progressed, the choirmaster arranged for then to sing harmony in concerts for the servicemen and they became popular, known as the 鈥淗armony Trio鈥�.

At home, our favourites were the patriotic war songs that we sang with gusto - often substituting our own words - and Christmas hymns. I never tired of listening to them, and grew up with music and song and the wailing of air raid sirens thrown in for good measure.

Far from being idyllic, my wartime childhood was laced with bleak fear of the happenings of war taking place in other countries and relayed to us in news bulletins on the wireless. Neighbours tended to share their fears with each other, and I have disturbed memories of standing among the daisies in our front garden, while groups of adults hunched around mother鈥檚 open front window, listening to the war news, which they took very seriously and discussed in detail after every bulletin.

My mother was a favourite person in our street, wise, kind and knowledgeable. She had served as a nurse in the 1914 war and gave her neighbours advice on nutrition, when there was very little to nourish them. Distraught mothers used to bring their sick children to her, often in the night, because they couldn鈥檛 afford to pay the doctor to visit. She encouraged some of the folk to cultivate a vegetable plot, but usually gave away some of her own crop to neighbours who had large families like her own

Maureen Black via Dundee Central Library

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