大象传媒

July 11th 1941

On Friday July 11th, in the year 1941, I celebrated my 6th birthday.

I don鈥檛 recall anything about the party, - except that we had JELLIES - but I do remember with great clarity events of the night that followed.

In July 1941 Britain had been at war for nearly two years, and at that stage the United States had not yet entered. The continent of Europe was under the control of the Axis powers 鈥� Germany and Italy. Russia was retreating under the German attack. For a few perilous months this island did seem almost the last bastion of freedom.

The immediate threat of invasion had receded, thanks to the RAF鈥檚 victory in September 1940, but our food and fuel supply lines were under threat as desperate battles were fought in the Atlantic and around our coasts to get the merchant shipping through.

At that time my mother and I were living at 6, Lesmurdie Place, in Lossiemouth. The house was a fairly new 2 bedroomed terrace house in a quiet little side road ; our first family home.
I had been born in 鈥� Braeside 鈥� on The Square , a much larger house, where my mother鈥檚 parents George and Isabella McKenzie lived. In the first year or so of their marriage my parents had lived there.

In September 1939 my father had gone off to the war. I remember trying to get off on the train too, but they wouldn鈥檛 let me. At that time my father was a junior partner in a local Seine net fishing boat, the BRIAR - of which a footnote later - and also a sub-lieutenant RNR , and consequently was one of the first to be called to duty when war broke out.

After the excitement of my birthday I was eventually got to bed, and to sleep. With Dad away, I slept in my mother鈥檚 bed at that time, instead of my own bedroom at the front of the house.
At some point in the night I came awake ; in fact it would have been about 2 am ; and looking towards the big window to my right I could see the sky. The blackout blind, which was one of the most rigorously enforced regulations of that time, must have fallen down. The sky was red.
This seemed very strange; but there it was, a strange firey red : nothing else seemed to be out there but this amazing colour. What happened immediately after that was that my mother, realising that we were being bombed , came over to my side of the bed and buried both our heads under the blankets.
Seconds, or minutes must have passed. My next vivid memory is getting out of the bed, my mother with me. There was stuff on the floor. And when I tried to open the door to get into the sitting room the stuff made it very difficult to do so. But we both pulled and eventually got the door open. The 鈥� stuff 鈥� was plaster from the walls and ceiling which had fallen to the floor, and was lying thick, or so it seemed to me.

While this was going on , Lieutenant J.J.McKenzie, ( Johnny ) was 600 miles to the south, in the English Channel, the very cockpit of the war, somewhere off the Dorset / Devon coast, skippering his minesweeper HMS IJUIN. Suddenly, out of the pale summer dark, they were attacked by a German fighter aircraft, which strafed them with bullets from end to end.
Fortunately, the attack was brief, and the crew successfully dived for cover, except that one man 鈥攖he BUNTS , that is the signalman, got a bullet in the leg. Medical facilities on small ships such as the the IJUIN were severely limited, especially at that difficult time. The bunts was in considerable pain, and my father decided two things 鈥� that the bullet should be removed, and that they should head for Portland which , at that time, was their base. No-one else volunteered to do the cutting so Johnny sterilised a knife, cut out the bullet, and patched the wound.
The IJUIN made all speed for Portland, entered the harbour, and secured alongside. A signal immediately arrived from the base. Would Lt.McKenzie report there as soon as possible.
Dad got up there very quickly and was met by an officer who explained 鈥� Your family are all right, but your house has been bombed. Here is your compassionate leave pass, and a railway warrant. Get going as soon as you can .鈥� Stopping only to make sure that the Bunts would be properly cared for, and to make basic arrangements for the ship, Dad got on his way.

Fighting our way out of the bedroom, my mother very calm, me rather thrilled, we got into the sitting room. The sitting room faced roughly south-east , the opposite way to the back bedroom window. This time there was no red sky, but there was enough light in the room for me to see quite clearly something that , in that moment, gave me pain. Jellies , in 1941 , were so rare, that to have a jelly, just a plain basic red or green jelly, was an event to be remembered and savoured for weeks afterwards. I loved them. Somehow my mother had managed to get some for my party. At the end of the party , amazingly, there was some left in the big glass bowl; and how carefully it had been put away in the big sideboard which stood in the sitting room on the opposite wall to the piano. The force of the bomb blasts had caused the doors of the sideboard to burst open, spilling out the contents, and mingling with the dust and plaster, face down, there was the bowl of jelly, its precious contents, even I could see, ruined !
I think I must have really disliked Mr.Hitler at that moment.
Meantime my mother returning to the bedroom, and seeing it in clearer light, found to her shock, that on her pillow, in the place where her head would have been had she not come over to my side of the bed, there was a large stone. It must have seemed an amazing deliverance.
Hearing this part of the story repeated in later years, and my mother not being there to confirm it,
I did come to wonder if it was true. However, many years later I was to find documentary evidence which removed all such doubt from my mind. I will come to that later.
The next thing I remember, in those early hours of July 12 1941, was a loud knocking at our front door. My mother opened it, and we were more than pleased to see the stocky, immensely reassuring figure of my grandfather George ( Dodie ). I was dressed in a dressing gown 鈥�
I think it was blue - over my pyjamas. He must have been hugely relieved to see that we were safe , but I just remember that he , literally , put me over his shoulder, and set off with me down the hill to Braeside. A little later my mother followed.

The reason for the bombing, apparently, was the RAF station adjacent to the town. It sems that the Germans had targeted it , but it was superbly camouflaged in those days - they even, for example, had grass and whin bushes growing over the roofs of the hangers - and the enemy bombers had been unable to find it. As they came away ,over the town, one feature was apparent - a small coastguard tower. They dropped a stick of bombs intending to hit it.
I believe there were only four bombs. The tower was just round the corner from where we lived, in fact the same type of houses extended round towards it.
I remember on the afternoon of the 12th going back up, with adults, but I鈥檓 not sure who, to the scene. There was a lot of mess , and barricades had been erected. There were police and Home Guard on the scene. I know we were allowed through, no doubt because we were residents. I heard the grown-ups talking a lot about 鈥� the CRATER鈥� , but the word was a new one to me, and I was puzzled by it.
It seemed quite gradually that I learned that 鈥� the crater 鈥� was a huge hole in the ground, and this was where one of our neighbours鈥� houses had been. It was too shocking to take in at one go, but a nice elderly couple, Mr.and Mrs.Wilson, and their house, had simply been wiped out.
Two other people had also been killed. The house was on Dunbar Street, closer to the coastguard station than us, but because of the angle of our side road, their back garden adjoined ours, and we knew them quite well. That was the bomb, a direct hit on their house, which had done most damage to our house too ; the others, all quite small bombs, had been a bit further away - one 鈥� over the quarries 鈥�, an area of sandstone cliff.

Later that long day, my father completed the journey home ; 700 miles by rail ; Weymouth to Waterloo ; Kings Cross to Edinburgh , Aberdeen, Elgin , and finally, wearily to Lossie : but curiously, thanks to that unknown German fighter鈥檚 attack in the Channel, he had got home , all that distance in well under 24 hours from the time of the bombing. He also had 14 precious days of leave.
There we were, all back together , and living at Braeside.

Further down the street, nearer to the harbour, lived my other grandmother, Helen Souter McKenzie. The neighbouring house to her had a small kitchen extension , and one effect of the bombing on the top of the hill where we lived, was that a huge boulder, bigger than a football , flew through the air from there , about a quarter of a mile , and crashed through the roof of the little room. Fortunately no-one was hurt, but I well remember that Granny鈥檚 neighbours later painted the stone a fawn colour, and it lay outside their back door for many years afterwards.

We were back in 6 Lesmurdie Place only four months later, according to another letter which my mother wrote , this time to her brother Albert in America , and which he gave me.

Strangely, I don鈥檛 remember the return. Presumably the damage to the house was only superficial although the extract from my mother鈥檚 letter, quoted at the end shows how bad it seemed at the time. My mother was now pregnant , and the following Spring, in that bedroom , she gave birth to a baby girl. Tragically, she died following the birth : and the baby, Isobel Margaret, only lived for a week or two afterwards.
I remember the huge funeral for my mother. I held a cord at the graveside, assisted by an elderly relative, Jimmy Scott. Then soon afterwards I remember the little white coffin of my baby sister, and the quick private burial. At the funerals I wore a light blue coat, on to which a black diamond patch was hastily sewn on both arms ; wartime austerity ; funny the details that stay in the memory.

A sort of epilogue to the bombing occurred well over thirty years later when a cousin, whom I had never met arrived , came from Australia鈥︹�︹�︹�ut first the promised footnote about my father鈥檚 pre-war boat, the BRIAR. She continued fishing during the war with a crew of generally older men ; fishing was a vital part of the war effort. One night, a few miles off Lossie harbour, in very poor visibility, she was run down by a considerably bigger Royal Navy ship - they didn鈥檛 have navigational radar in those days - and sank very rapidly. Luckily all her crew were saved, and I believe eventually the Admiralty accepted full responsibility and paid compensation to the owners, including my father.
But to return to my Australian cousin . He was the son of my Uncle Joe, one of my mother鈥檚 brothers, who had emigrated before I was born, and never returned to this country *.
Stewart remarked that there was a letter from my mother, which his father had always kept, and that it touched on the bombing. I asked if he could send me a photo-copy ; but in due course he was kind enough actually to let me have the original

I would like to quote some lines to end this memoir :

鈥� When I heard the terrific explosion I threw myself over John , and covered our heads with the blankets , then the whole house seemed to be coming in on us. Our bed was alongside the window and it came right in , with glass flying everywhere , and plaster liking to choke you 鈥︹�︹�︹�︹��..

鈥淭hey were searching for these four people by now, but with little hope , and later found bits of bodies scattered far around .鈥�

鈥� When we went up in daylight , what a scene of desolation , and a stone , Joe , a big one, right where my head would have been on my pillow had I not jumped over beside John, and the walls all stripped of plaster, and not a window left in, the back door lying off its hinges 鈥︹�︹�︹�︹�︹�︹�︹��..and in the bathroom you could see the sky through a big hole in the roof .鈥�

鈥� 鈥︹�︹�︹�︹�︹�︹�︹��.we are thinking long for the strain of it to be over , and our menfolk
safe home again. 鈥�

Letter from Elsie McKenzie to her brother Joe, dated 30th July 1941.

* subsequent to the first printing of this, I learned that my Uncle Joe had in fact made one return trip to U.K., probably in 1936.

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