大象传媒

Marjory's war.
Wartime in Edinburgh 1939-45
by Mrs Marjory M Shaw
World War 2 commenced on Sunday 3rd September 1939. The first seven months are remembered as 鈥淭he Phoney war鈥� because there was so little military activity in France, where the British and French armies faced the Germans, and there was still no significant bombing of civilian targets in England and Wales. In May 1940 the British Expeditionary Force evacuation via Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain in August and September 1940 changed everything.
However in the Edinburgh and Glasgow regions of Scotland armed conflict from the air commenced on Monday 16th October 1939 with the bombing of British warships in the anchorage of the Royal Navy鈥檚 Rosyth naval base alongside the world famous Forth Railway Bridge. At the time , and for decades afterwards few details were published of such events.
Hitler still had hopes of negotiating peace with the United Kingdom so the German bomber pilots had strict instructions not to bomb any warships actually in Rosyth harbour in case of civilian casualties.Five hundred miles across the North Sea was the northernmost German Airforce base at Sylt on the island of Westerland. Edinburgh and the nearby major Royal Navy base of Rosyth was within reach of their Heinkel 111 and Junkers 88 bombers. But they had no fighters with enough range to accompany them. Nevertheless during the 鈥淧honey War鈥� many air attacks, particularly on Royal Naval and convoy shipping in and around the Forth and Cyde estuaries continued to be made. Bombs were also dropped in Edinburgh and Glasgow areas but not in the systematic and intense way seen later in London and other English cities.
The Forth and Clyde region was defended mainly by two Auxiliary Air Force fighter squadrons, 鈥�602 City of Glasgow鈥�, based at Drem, East Lothian, and 鈥�603 City of Edinburgh鈥�, based at Turnhouse, now Edinburgh airport. Flight Lieutenant George Pinkerton of 602 Squadron, a Renfrewshire farmer, was the first pilot of the RAF ever to engage the German Luftwaffe with a Spitfire fighter, which he did on 16th October 1939. A captured German airman told his Scottish interrogators that the Forth was known to the Luftwaffe bomber crews as 鈥淪uicide Alley鈥� as they had no fighters able to accompany them.
In 1939 I was a recently graduated primary school teacher living, as I had done for twenty years, with my widowed mother in Portobello, a seaside suburb of Edinburgh only twelve miles along the coast from the Forth Railway Bridge and Rosyth. In August, immediately before outbreak of war, I was posted by the West Lothians Education Authority to take sole charge of 25 Edinburgh schoolchildren aged five to twelve.. They were evacuated from Edinburgh Education Authority schools to a fine mansion house , 鈥淭he Craigs鈥� near Linlithgow, a small country town twenty miles West of Edinburgh. There I divided them by age into five separate groups and, single handed, taught them all assembled in one large room, moving continuously from group to group.
I had been trained at St George's Teachers Training College Edinburgh in what was still regarded as an advanced system developed by the German educationalist Freidrich Froebel, who had opened the first kindergarten in 1837. My job at 鈥淭he Craigs鈥� was a golden opportunity to put all I had learned into practice. Froebel teacher training is no longer used because it has long since been accepted and absorbed into the present British educational system.
However, I was at least to have a snapshot view of the violence of war. Briefly home from the Craigs for a mid term holiday, on the afternoon of Monday 16th October 1939 I was walking along Portobello High Street. Suddenly I was overtaken by the war in full blast in the form of a ground hugging Heinkel 111 bomber heading for Rosyth and hotly pursued by a couple of Spitfires each with eight machine guns blazing and showering brass cartridges over Portobello High Street and the power station a quarter of a mile further on.
It all happened very suddenly of course. First from the East a rising crescendo of aircraft noise and gunfire then the sight of a bomber so close that I could clearly see the face of one of the German airmen in it! A Luftwaffe communique stated the following day 鈥� Our bombers were flying low enough to see Scottish peasants waving to them!鈥� Perhaps that was me! I was stunned!
A few seconds before, less than half a mile along the same road, where Portobello High Street is named Abercorn Terrace, Joe McLuskie, a painter and decorator was up a ladder painting a first floor window frame. He was shot by a machine gun bullet from the same bomber! His mate Frank Flynn, steadying the ladder, said 鈥渋t was flying well below the height of St Philip鈥檚 Church steeple just across the road鈥�! Joe McLuskie was rushed to Leith Hospital for an emergency operation to remove a bullet lodged next to his stomach.Several other houses were hit including that of Lord Provost of Edinburgh Sir Henry Steele, all along the line of Portobello High Street and its extensions..
Of the very many ships sunk or damaged in the Forth estuary one was the Royal Navy鈥檚 then newest cruiser - HMS Belfast, now a memorial in the Thames. She was so badly damaged by a German magnetic mine in the Forth estuary on 21st October 1939 that she was unable to resume active service until late 1942 having had to be almost completely rebuilt.
The 16th October 1939 air raid was to be the first of very many which occurred sporadically in every one but the last year of the War. In a mass bombing attack on Glasgow on 6th/7th May 1941, during the approach to Glasgow, a German bomber was damaged by anti-aircraft fire and jettisoned its bombs over Portobello.. One of these four bombs fell on a bungalow belonging to a friend of my husband. The friend, his wife and two children were killed instantly.The last two air raids were in March and May 1944. The last enemy act in the Forth occurred only one hour before German surrender at midnight on 7th/8th May 1945 when a U-Boat sank two ships off the Isle of May, pointlessly killing nine men.
By the end of 1940 I had to return to Portobello to look after my mother whose health had declined. In July 1941 I married Alan Shaw, a friend of my student days. We had met in 1938 when we were members of an Edinburgh University intercollegiate committee. Little more than six months later Alan, who had been been an officer in the Royal Engineers since the outbreak of war, was posted to the imperial Indian Army for nearly four years!
From then until September 1944 I worked as a school teacher for Edinburgh Education Authority at Duddingston School. The extra curricular duties included fire watching duties at the school. This involved my colleague Betty McClure and I spending the night in sleeping bags on the floor of the headmasters study, ready to leap up and deal with incendiary bombs from German bombers which until the end of 1944 were still a threat. Unfortunately the pupils included many from deprived homes. They brought fleas with them which took up residence in the headmasters study and we met these fleas on firewatching nights!
In September 1944 I became reception class teacher at Edinburgh Academy, a totally different kind of school! In September 1945 I was pressed to become a permanent member of their staff , with free tuition for any children I might subsequently have. However Alan was in any case committed to return to Metropolitan Vickers in Manchester upon final release from the army. As neither Alan nor I had any idea whatsoever of when he would be repatriated from the Indian Army I resigned and set about finding ways and means of going out to India!. He arrived home unexpectedly by air on 23rd October 1945!
My war service as a civilian school teacher in Edinburgh consisted of a weekly stint at the YMCA in Edinburgh assisting in their canteen set up for the hundreds of servicemen of the armed forces then in or passing through the city . My chief war risk seemed to be having my bottom pinched by these irrepressible, sex starved young men!
In the autumn of 1945 all we helpers received a letter of thanks from the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and an invitation to a formal Reception on 26th October 1945 in the Freemasons Hall 96 George Street. As Alan unexpectedly arrived back from the Indian Army on 23rd October 1945 I forgot to go!
The Army made a serious attempt to send Alan indefinitely to the British Army of the Rhine at the end of his disembarkation leave. However Army regulations provided a loophole. Officers of field rank i.e. majors and above, were allowed to 鈥渄iscuss鈥� their proposed postings by attending at the War Office for interview. There Alan diplomatically let his opinions be known!
Instead he was posted from 2nd January 1946 to Engineer Stores Central Depot, Long Marston, Stratfold upon Avon, to work out the last month of his army service - and this time I was with him - in a magnificent half timbered Tudor farmhouse in the heart of the country!
END
14th September 2004

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.