大象传媒

Robert Borland鈥檚 recollections of World War 2 (part 1)

The Outbreak of War and Evacuation
My father was in the Territorial Army prior to 1939. He was in the 103 Army Troops Company, Royal Engineers at Maryhill Barracks. He was called up immediately war broke out. This led to hardship for my family as my father was earning 拢4 4/- a week as a motor mechanic with the Western SMT garage at Newton Mearns and his army pay as a Sapper was 49/- a week. This had a large impact on my family鈥榮 circumstances!

In 1939 we lived in Shields Road in Glasgow (now part of the Kingston Bridge / M8) and I had just started primary education at Scotland Street School, designed by Charles Rennie MacIntosh and now a museum. My school was evacuated due its proximity to the strategic Clydeside targets that were later so attractive to Luftwaffe bombers.

I was evacuated to Auchinleck with my two sisters, who were too young for school, and my mother. It was unusual for a mother to accompany her children but with the reduction in my family鈥檚 financial position my mother could not afford to run the house we had in Glasgow.

My father was sent to France with the Allied Expeditionary Force, at least I think that鈥檚 what it was called. He came out of France via St Nazaire ten days after Dunkirk. My mother was distraught when she heard nothing of him after the Dunkirk evacuation. It was a great relief when a letter arrived from him saying he was back in England

Like most servicemen my father was reticent about talking of the bad times he experienced.

When he was an old man my father told us about the ship in front of his being sunk as they left St Nazaire harbour. The skipper of his ship had to plough through the soldiers swimming in the water. It would have been foolhardy to risk stopping his ship to pick up survivors.

A choice I would not have liked to make.

Moving to Rothesay
Auchinleck did not suit my Mother, so she took us to my Granny鈥檚 in Rothesay. My Granny had my uncle and aunt living with her, so we had to find a house of our own.

We managed to get a room and kitchen in a large slum building named Staffa Place. Approximately 70 families were accommodated in Staffa Place and access to the houses was by two circular stairways, three storeys high and two sets of verandas. This formed three sides of a square around a central drying green and the fourth side consisted of the outdoor toilets and wash houses.

It was not comfortable on cold and rainy winter nights to go to the toilets. Only the entrance to the toilets was lit, dimly, and that was by gas. After dark you needed a torch as the circular stairways were not lit nor were the toilets themselves.
For emergencies a potty was kept. The elderly all had their 鈥渃hanties鈥�! Bathing was done in the public baths!

It was a much smaller house and much worse conditions than our house in Glasgow but we at least were together and comfortable.

During the war Rothesay had gas street lamps and the 鈥渓eary鈥� came round to light them at night and switched them off in the morning. The glass on the streetlamps was partly blacked out to comply with the blackout restrictions but a little light was needed to allow normal night time activities.

Our house also had gaslight. Due to the verandas and the construction of the houses, we had to keep the light on in the kitchen/sitting/bed room at all times.

It was always a chore to replace the gas mantle. You had to install the new one, set light to it so that it formed a delicate sort of hard ash, then turn the gas on and then light it. If you sneezed the mantle would disintegrate and you had to start over again. It could get quite fraught and you had to ensure that you had spares at all times.

In the winter we could get firewood fairly easily and this augmented our coal and the burning logs smelled marvellous while making the house very cosy. Sometimes we would sit with the gaslight off, listening to the radio, by the flickering light of the fire.

There was less risk of air raids than in the big cities and towns and was therefore immensely safer.

End of part 1

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