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The Parachutist by John McManus
Around the time of the "Blitz" on Clydeside my family lived in a tenement at the comer of Stobcross St. and Finnieston St., overlooking the Queens and Princes Docks in Glasgow. My father was a docker, and because of the wartime conditions, worked a lot of late and night shifts loading and unloading the ships in the docks. If an air raid alert was called the dockers would have to stop work and on most occasions would be sent home. There had been quite a number of alerts over the past few months and lot of them had turned out to be aborted or redirected raids and false alarms etc. so the people in the neighbourhood had become a little blase about using the cold and damp air-raid shelters and quite often stayed at home when the sirens sounded. One evening when the alarm sounded it was decided that we would all bed down in our neighbours long, warm, lobby (Hallway to non-Glaswegians). It was absolutely useless as an air-raid shelter being two storeys up but I think everyone felt safer in familiar company plus there was always tea and sandwiches served up. My father and his workmates were sent home but he informed my mother that he and some of his mates would remain at the street comer and watch the raid as it developed. This practice was quite common in Glasgow as we had not yet experienced the saturation bombing that a lot of the cities in England were getting. As the raid progressed the sound of gunfire and bomb explosions, sometimes faint, sometimes loud, could be heard. After a while there was a sort of a lull but just when everyone was starting to relax and converse normally there was an almighty roar accompanied by the sound of shattering glass and the violent shaking of the building. For a few seconds there was a silence and then everyone started yelling at once although most of us children were too young to be really frightened.
My mother was calling out for my father. "Charlie! Charlie! My Charlie's out there!" there was more panic and confusion until it was learned that although there was some blast damage in the street, everyone was safe and unhurt and that my father was on his way up to the house. There were gasps when he appeared at the door covered from head to toe in dust and soot, (Glasgow at that time being a very dirty city - but made worse by the falling debris from the bomb blast), and for all the world looked like one of the Kentucky Minstrels that I used to see at the cinema.
My mother of course, now that her fear had subsided, demanded to know what had happened and my father somewhat sheepishly explained. He and three of his friends had been studying the sky for signs of enemy activity etc. When someone spotted what appeared to be a parachute drifting over the roof of our Tenement. As it moved over the open space formed by the street and the railway sidings they saw it miss the repair works opposite and disappear behind the building. "It's a Nazi parachutist!" rose the cry. "Let's get the b*!" and off went the four dockers in pursuit down Finnieston St. brandishing their cargo-hooks. They had only run about fifty yards when there was a tremendous explosion from behind the building. They were all bowled over by the blast but were protected from serious injury by the iron sides of the road bridge that they were crossing.
The "parachutist" was actually a very powerful parachute mine, a weapon that the Germans used to great effect. Although most of the explosion was absorbed by the repair works outbuildings it still managed to shake our tenement and blow in some doors and quite a number of windows, (including those of our neighbours fish and chip shop). My father and his mates were shaken and shocked but otherwise unharmed. My mother, in her relief, berated my father, saying. "You big idiot! What if it had been a parachutist! What good would you Dockers hooks been against his machine guns?"
There was a slightly happier outcome to the affair when, after the "all clear" and my father had cleaned himself up, he returned to the street to "assist" a couple of special constables and assorted neighbours secure the corner pub which had its doors and windows blown in. An open barrel of strong beer had been found to have sprung so it was "rescued" and the remains of its contents were shared among the rescuers.

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