大象传媒

I am submitting this story on behalf of my friend, Delma Dewar. Delma is aware of the 大象传媒's Rights and Responsibilities Policy and has agreed to her story being told under these conditions.

Delma Dewar

In 1939 Delma, then aged 7, and her sister were intended to be evacuated to America and vaccinations were the order of the day. Delma鈥檚 mother wanted the girls to be vaccinated on their legs. Delma thinks she was the victim of a dirty needle and she ended up in bed for two months, at her grandmother鈥檚, with a poisoned leg. Delma has a scar and an indentation on her leg to prove her story. Delma thinks that her mother did not want to split the girls from their brother who was only a few months old, hence the reason for Delma being evacuated to Skye, not the USA. However, before then Delma remembers the Luftwaffe flying overhead on their way to Glasgow, the air raid sirens wailing and everyone rushing to the Anderson shelter. Delma cannot remember any of the adults showing signs of fear or panic.

Instead of America, the children found themselves on Skye in a village called Heaste, 5 miles from Broadford. The community consisted of 13 houses and the schoolhouse by the shore of Loch Eishort. Ten children aged between 5 and 12 years attended the school. One child, 5 year old Marsali, spoke only Gaelic until she began to learn English at the school. The ten children were taught in one room. At playtime the children were given Horlicks to drink; however the children took delight in pouring it down the rat-hole in the schoolroom. At lunch time the children the nearby small island when the tide was out where they would come across bombs and torpedoes. Delma regards their surviving these escapades as something of a miracle. On occasion the children forgot the time and their teacher, Mrs Ferguson 鈥渂eside herself鈥� lined them up and administered the tawse.

One day, at playtime, a group of sailors came marching by. The children knew that a terrible accident had occurred at sea and realized that the sailors were going out in rowing boats to recover bodies which had been washed ashore in remote places, some accessible only by boat. The children were shocked to hear the sailors singing: 鈥淎n Apple For The Teacher鈥� as they passed by. The following day the children explored the boats which had been used to pick up the bodies. A macabre sight met their eyes: pieces of skin that had come off the drowned sailors鈥� bodies.

Delma discovered years after the war that the Queen Mary, converted to a troopship, collided with the cruiser "Curacao" in the Atlantic, cutting the latter in two.

The children returned to Edinburgh a few months before the end of the war. On VE Day they enjoyed a bonfire in Holyrood Park where Delma鈥檚 鈥渘ice blue coat鈥� was burned by a firework. That dampened Delma鈥檚 victory celebrations. She had to return home, wondering what she was going to tell her mother. Delma distinctly recalls seeing a little girl about 8 years鈥� old outside a dairy in Willowbrae. Delma could tell that there was something 鈥渧ery much wrong with her.鈥� An adult told Delma that the little girl was suffering from shellshock.

Delma鈥檚 final memory of those days is of Edinburgh being full of service personnel in uniform.

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