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This story has been submitted to the People's war website by Julia Shuvalova for GMR Actiondesk on behalf of Ronny Mitchell and has been added with his permission. The author is fully aware of the terms and conditions of the site.

I lived in Clarkston near Glasgow, but I remember the German bombing raids on Clydeside shipyard, from 1942 onwards. Every time the sirens had gone off, the population would have hid in the basements of their houses. From where we stayed, I could hear the bombs exploding over Clydebank. Next morning in the garden we collected strips of aluminium foil, which the Germans had dropped to confuse the radars in Glasgow. We were taught to use gas masks at school, and some of my classmates were children whose homes had been destroyed during the raids. Near where we lived there were a lot of trenches that the home guard had dug for ‘defence’ in case the Germans would invade.

In the area surrounding Glasgow where I grew up food was scarce during the war, but the tinned egg powder we had — which was yellow and tasted terrible — added flavour. It was used as house paint, so lots of houses were painted with it.

And of course I remember the big bonfire on VE day in 1945. We had fireworks in our village, which were supplied by the father of one of the boys in the village. He owned two restaurants in Glasgow, so he could afford to buy them!

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