大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Matthew Lee of 大象传媒 Scotland on behalf of Nell McFadden and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was 12 years old when the war started. I was at school, and when we heard about the war we thought it was something that wouldn鈥檛 involve us. But soon it came home to us that we would be affected 鈥� that was when we saw sticky tape being put up on all the windows of the school. Then there was the blackout 鈥� you weren鈥檛 to show any light in your house after dark, so heavy blackout curtains were put up. And I remember the 鈥渂affle wall鈥� that was built on the pavement opposite the entry to our close. You could still go in and out, but the wall ran in front of the entrance to block or 鈥渂affle鈥� the effect of a bomb blast if it exploded in the street. My father put up an Anderson shelter on the back green.

Although there was only a bit of bombing in Gourock, the sirens would go off whenever there was a raid on Greenock nearby or across the other side of the Clyde at Clydebank or over in Glasgow 鈥� and that was often. So we spent a lot of time in the shelter waiting for the all-clear siren to sound. We would take old Mrs Campbell who lived in our close down into the shelter with us.

In those days many people left school at 14. When I was 14 the chip shop downstairs from where I lived offered me a job, so I left school and went to work there. I worked there for about a year from 1941 to 1942. Because I was young they wouldn鈥檛 let me serve in the chip shop itself, I worked in the tea-shop that they owned next door. In the mornings we worked preparing the potatoes 鈥� getting the eyes out with a knife 鈥� and the fish. It was then I learnt to gut and bone a fish without using a knife. I can do it with just my bare hands. I only need a knife to remove the head and the fins. In the afternoons I would go to the pictures, because I was working serving in the tea-shop in the evenings 鈥� the afternoons were my time off. But Gourock was so full of people by then that you would be queuing 2 hours to get into the pictures.

The chip shop and the tea-shop were also full of these people who were in the town because of the war: there were American soldiers based there, British soldiers who were based at the pier-head, and also Dutch troops who took over a caf茅 and made it their office (in what today is the Caf茅 Continental). The town was also full of sailors and airmen as well soldiers. My first husband Albert was a soldier who had been discharged from the army on health grounds after barely six months; he had three brothers in the army and another one in the merchant navy, while I had two uncles in the army. I didn鈥檛 marry Albert however until I was 19, in 1946.

Long before then, after I had been working in the chip shop for a year I decided I had to get a job where I wasn鈥檛 working at night. So from the age of 15 until 19 I worked for the council as a 鈥済as lassie鈥�, and because I was the youngest of the four women I was the wee gas lassie. In those days people paid for their gas by putting a penny in the slot of a meter in their house. No penny, no gas. When the meter was full it had to be emptied and the money paid to the council 鈥� that was the gas lassie鈥檚 job.

There were only two kinds of meter 鈥� penny meters which most people had, or shilling meters 鈥� but you had to be well off to have a shilling meter. A shilling was a lot in those days. When I would go to someone鈥檚 house to empty their meter I was always popular because depending on how much gas had been used I could give them a rebate from the money in the meter. So it was a big day when the gas lassie came to call, because once Mam got the rebate then she would give a penny to each of her wee-ans. I could adjust how much gas was dispensed for a penny in each household and the less they used each time the bigger the rebate they got back when the meter was emptied.

I would sit at the kitchen table with the pile of pennies from the meter and wrap them into 5 shilling rolls, with 60 pennies in each. Four of these rolls weighed a pound [lb] and was worth a pound [拢]. I carried these rolls wrapped in newspaper around with me until I had about 6 or 7lbs in my bag and then I would carry all the money back to the council office to be cashed in and accounted for.

One of the gas lassies was over 60, but the council wouldn鈥檛 let her retire as there was no one available to replace her. As I was the youngest it would always be me who had to stand in the queue for her if there were any luxuries like bananas or cakes available in the shops 鈥� not that I got one in return for my time. We all had to pull together at that period and it brought the best out in people on the whole.

When I got married at 19 in 1946 and the men were coming back from the war I was told I wouldn鈥檛 be able to go back to my job as a gas lassie now that I was married. That wouldn鈥檛 be allowed today, but laws were different at that time. Everything remained on the ration after the war, and my granny and mother had to save up their clothes coupons to be able to get me enough for a wedding dress. The first time I ever saw silk stockings they were a present that the master at arms on the ship Aquitania brought back from one of his trips to the United States and gave to us because he was friends with my father.

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