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

I was fifteen years old when war broke out and a 21 year old when it finished in August 1945 which was the month of my birthday.

I can always remember coming home from the Business College I attended in Paisley and walking down Well Street to my then home in Craiglea, of passing a newspaper boy with a placard over his shoulder and holding a pile of papers, shouting ‘Mr Chamberlain declares war on Germany’. A never forgotten moment! Only a few nights after that we could hear the drone of the German planes passing overhead, but that time nothing happened.

In November of 1939 my mother and father moved to Douglas Avenue in Elderslie and our house, which I live in now, was the last house to be built here until after the war finished. The field was next to our fence and we had cows grazing right beside us.

Our neighbours had moved us from Craiglea and bought the house next door, so my father and Mr Cowden built an air raid shelter halfway down our garden and in the heavy rain, they had a stirrup pump to clear out the water when the shelter started to fill up. It was a great shelter and did us proud for the rest of the war years. I can always remember whenever the sirens would sound, my mother would every time pick up her small case which contained insurance papers etc, before we all dashed out.

One of the saddest things I recall was when a bomb was dropped on the First Aid Post at Woodside.

My uncle should have been on duty that night but by good fortune, as it happened, he had a poisoned finger and couldn’t go. Two young men I knew drove ambulances at the time were both killed, as was a young woman from Thornhill Avenue and a Paisley doctor. There may have been others, but these people were the ones I knew about. The two boys would only have been about 19 or 20 years of age and I knew them well as they were both members of my church (at the time known as High Parish Church, Paisley and now as Oakshaw Trinity), we were in Sunday School together when we were youngsters.

My mother had relatives in Toronto with family in the Canadian Army and Air Force. The relatives wrote asking her if she would be kind enough, when the boys came over here, to let them spend their leave at our house, which she did. The four of them were stationed in different parts of England, and fortunately they didn’t all get their leave at the same time. We had these boys back and forth for 4 years. We all kept in touch after the war had ended and the one who served in the Medical Core came here and stayed with my folks for 6 weeks in 1970. He wrote until his death in 1984.

I worked during the war as a shorthand typist in Thomas Whyte and Sons, Leighpark. I was much too young to be called up, but as my health wasn’t what you could call wonderful anyway, they would not have accepted me. In these days you could travel form Elderslie to Paisley for two-pence halfpenny — small wages in those days at work but we were very content.
We moved around in the blackout at night and the buses had little blinds on all the windows. You had to depend on the conductor who stood on the platform calling out each stop, as you could not open the blinds to look out. Somehow we all seemed to manage quite well. I can remember, ant time I came home alone form Paisley or Glasgow, I had no fear of walking from the bus stop on Main Road Elderslie to Douglas Avenue, that anyone would attack me. My father used to make me carry a darning needle with me — just in case. Fortunately there was no need for it. My girlfriend lived in Glenpartrick Road, so when she got off the bus, I had to come home alone.

At the start of the War, Johnstone Castle housed a large number of Polish soldiers who on the whole were polite and mannerly young men. My parents asked a few of them to the house to share a meal with us and they were always pleased to come. After they left it was Officer Cadets who had arrived and they were there for some time.

Johnstone in those days was quite a dull town compared to the nice bright place it is today. I can remember Mr Shand who delivered ‘Coal-Brickets all around Elderslie and Johnstone, with his horse and cart once a week and my mother and our neighbours were always pleased to see him. It was the same when the coal man came, he always got a welcome.

How my mother coped so well with the ration card I don’t know but we managed very well and had no complaints. I often think we were a lot healthier in those days and there were fewer serious illnesses.

On of my neighbours had as sister who owned a sweet shop in Johnstone and we loved her selection of sweets, as she always had a great variety. We would save our sweet coupons for a while so that we could get a bigger assortment.

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