大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Catherine Garvie 大象传媒 LPM on behalf of Owen Rankin from Hurlford Primary School with the permission of the Assistant Head Teacher. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My classmates and I were transformed into evacuees for the day when we visited Kittochside Museum of Country Life at East Kilbride. Our teacher from 1940 was Miss Moffat and she was very strict!

We had to walk one and a half miles to our clasroom, which turned out to be a dairy barn on a farm. We had to sit silently in straight rows on hard wooden benches with no desks. When we wanted to answer a question we had to stand up, and after answering we had to say 'Miss'. We were taught about air raid drills, and what noises the sirens made, and when it was safe to take our gas masks off. We had to practise putting the gas masks on and off very quickly, and if we weren't fast enought Miss Moffat would give us the belt! She showed us the belt, or strap, and where it was hidden under her long black teacher's robes. She demonstrated the belt against the sink and it sounded very sore!

By the end of the day we had learned a lot about the evacuees, and had been shown the small suitcases which contained everythng they could take with them when they were evacuated to the safer countryside. But we were fed-up carrying the gas masks boxes - they were annoying and uncomfortable to carry.

My class also visited Dean Castle in Kilmarnock and discovered that during WWII it had been a boarding school for boys, mainly from Glasgow. There were loads of ghost stories made up at this time by the schoolteachers to stop the boys from trying to escape - swords falling from the walls and cutting off heads and ghosts in the corridors! The top of the Keep of Dean Castle was used as an observation post by the ARP (Air Raid Precautions) to look out for enemy planes so that they could sound the siren to warn everyone. We also learned that the lovely rose gardens in Dean Castle were dug up and used for growing vegetables during the War.

We also researched about some of the things that happened in the Irvine Valley during WWII - that the Valley textile factories mad mosquito netting, splinter-proof nets and camouflage netting for the war effort. We found out that soldiers of many natinalities - Canadian, Polish and Belgian - were billeted in Loudoun Castle grounds.

Hurlford's War memorial lists the names of 26 men and one woman who were killed in action during WWII - it is important that we remember them and the sacrifices they made. In November this year, our class led the Remembrance Servide in our school and we wrote poems about why it is important that we wear poppies every November 11th.

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