大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Janet Clasper of Renfrewshire Libraries on behalf of Mr Ian Cameron and has been added to the site with his permission.

鈥淚鈥� Witness

In 1940 I was 12 years old and had an early morning job delivering milk for Pollock鈥檚 dairy that was situated at the corner of Glasgow Road and Penilee Road in Ralston. Before we set off on our rounds Mrs Pollock always gave us a cup of tea and a biscuit, which we could choose from a selection of tins that covered the whole of the wall behind the counter. It was a truly mouth- watering variety to choose from but my favourites were the Ayton Sandwich and the Gypsy Cream. This particular morning as we set off on our rounds an aeroplane flying fairly low appeared. It seemed to be following the tramlines along the road from Glasgow to Paisley. Suddenly it banked and turned northwards above Penilee Road which leads to Hillington Industrial Estate and the large factory of Rolls Royce making at that time aero-engines for the RAF鈥檚 spitfire planes. He was flying low enough for me to see quite clearly the black cross of the Luftwaffe in the wings of the plane. I can remember feeling surprised that a German pilot had managed to get so far without being challenged by a British fighter or even any of the Ack Ack batteries. Nor had there been any siren warning. I even felt a sneaking admiration for the audacity of the pilot. As I moved from house to house with the rolls and milk I kept an eye on the raider and after a few minutes he banked once again to the right and as he did so I was able to see a 鈥渟tick鈥� of five or six bombs leave the plane and start their descent to the ground. I think I stood still till the noise of the explosions galvanised me and I started to 鈥榣eg it鈥� back to the shop where a brick built air raid shelter had been built on the opposite corner. I had only been running a short distance when I realised that the metal crate with its five or six bottles of milk which I was carrying was perhaps a slight handicap and with a feeling of carefree abandonment let it crash to the pavement. When I arrived back at the at the shelter I found that the rest of the boys (among them my older brother Robert) had gathered and that one of them had broken the glass of the little box on the door of the shelter which held the key to open the door. Our curiosity must have been greater than our apprehension for we stood outside the shelter so that we would not miss any of the action. Not that there was much to see for our morning raider was a mere speck in the distant eastern sky. The unflappable Mrs Pollock was not impressed by any of this and was only concerned that I should get on with my deliveries. Later that day after school I cycled over to Hillington to see what damage had been done. As far as I could see the large Rolls Royce factory was not damaged at all. All I could find was a surprisingly small crater in the grass border beside one of the smaller factories on the estate. Beside the crater stood a small tree sapling unperturbed and undamaged however there was a fairly large hole in the factory wall. At a recent meeting of the Paisley Philosophical Society the lecturer speaking on aerial photography was able to show a photo of Rolls Royce Hillington Factory taken during the war by a Luftwaffe recognisance plane. I feel sure my raider had a copy of this with him that morning. My friend who had been at the meeting was able to tell me that his father had been Scotland鈥檚 first air raid casualty having been slightly injured when a bomb hit the factory where he was a manager. The factory was Macgregors Food makers of Grannys soup and I think that was the site of my hole in the wall.

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