大象传媒

" i'm a pupil from Heaton Manor Comprehnsive school, Newcastle Upon-Tyne, entering Kathleen White's story onto the website, and she fully understands the website terms and conditions of use"

To so many the war was a time of tragedy, sorrow, fear and separation that I hesitate to record my memories. Except for an occasional frisson of fear I remained untouched in this way.
However Until 1943 I was living in Shetland which, lying as it does as near Bergen as Aberdeen meant that we were heavily defended.
When war broke out i was a schoolgirl in Shetland. About one month after the war started i was ill in bed with mumps and not allowed to get up. Suddenly my mother called "come, come." There, above the house was a German Aircraft, black crosses under the wings. There were no jetplanes so it was going quite slowly. People in the town said that they could see people in the plane waving to them. It did no harm but as far as i remember, machine gunned a sea plane in the harbour. I think it was the same plane that dropped what was the second bomb of the war causing the first bomb casualty. This was a rabbit. It was stuffed and taken to London where a comedian took it on stage and popularised the song,
"Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run,
im going to get you with a gun, gun, gun."

Shetland is as near Norway as Aberdeen, so when the Germans captured Norway, many boats escaping crossed to Shetland. I remember seeing these small boats which were later used to land agents in Norway.

The sea around us was heavily mined. We lived by the sea and were telephoned one night to say that mines had broken loose in a gale, so all shutters had to be fixed.

We had to carry special identity cards with our photographs.
Early in the war, a teacher, friendly with my friends parents, organised distribution of gas masks throughout the islands. Because of this friendship, my friend and i, were used to fill in the cards, while teachers fitted the masks.
Travelling south to the mainland one summer there was a severe gale. All ships had to have an escort, and during the night, we lost our escort. We had to put in to the Orkney Islands and wait there for 24hours in the boat.

During War all clothing had to have coupons. We were growing up and wanted nice stockings. What we did was to paint our legs with potassium permanganate but we still needed a seam. we did this with an eyebrow pencil.

In Shetland, most of the girls could knit fair isle. We knitted gloves and mittens because if we sold them to the shops they had to give us clothing coupons as well as money. For a pair of mittens with three patterns we got 3/6d ( around 17p)

Our school, which was in a lovely position overlooking the busy harbour, was taken over by the military and we were sent back to the primary school where partitions were put down the classrooms. We did not like this, i left school shortly after this. Many pupils were going into the services and we were caught up in that excitement.
For me this meant much catching up later.

All food was rationed, my mother kindly gave me her sweet coupons.

Many raids left Shetlan for Norway particularly looking for the battleships which threatened the merchant shipping. We had many alerts but i did not experience an actual air raid until i was in Aberdeen and the Bridge of Don barracks was attacked.

Lerwick- Shetland Isles
1939-1944

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