大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's Warsite by Mairi Campbell of the 大象传媒 on behalf of Helen, of Renfrew and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully undertands the site's terms and conditions.

I was working in Fairfield Shipyard as a tracer. This was thought to be a good job for young ladies in those days and my mum was very pleased. When the war started I was classed as a 鈥渞eserved occupation鈥� so remained in Fairfield throughout the war. My job involved tracing plans for the navy ships which were drawn up by the draughtsmen then photographed onto blueprints for building them. You had to be very accurate as you weren鈥檛 allowed to rub out any mistakes. You had a long period of training and supervision (a three year apprenticeship) and a great deal of practice before being allowed to work unsupervised. In the canteen at lunchtimes there was a very ordered format for eating with the Head Tracer sitting at the top of the table, then came the tracers and then came the apprentices. The ships tracers sat at one table and the engine tracers (my lot) at another. You had to be polite and ask to be excused from the table when you had finished your meal.

When the war started nothing much changed; you still had security checks and the work was the same only busier. Until the Clydebank Blitz the war never really touched us. At the time of the blitz some bombs had fallen and made big holes in the road so that the buses couldn鈥檛 run and I had to walk from Renfrew to Govan to get to work. Sometimes the sirens would go off during work and you then all went to the shelters under the yards. I worked late two nights a week until 8pm, at home you listened to the radio and did knitting. My employers supplied the wool and we knitted socks for the sailors on the Arctic Convoys.

Once a month I went with my mother to the soldiers canteen which was ran by the Woman鈥檚 Guild in the town to serve soldiers. Renfrew had a battalion of Sherwood Forresters who were camped at one of the primary schools. Families adopted the soldiers, my mother taking two soldiers who would come home for meals, and to play cards and just chat, like a home from home. Mother insisted however that 鈥渉er鈥� soldiers had to be married ones!

My dad used to go to work at the First Aid post when the sirens sounded. We didn鈥檛 get our bomb shelter until after the first night of the blitz. You had to dig the foundations for it yourself. We had a problem because there was water lying in our garden and we needed men to come and cement a floor in the shelter which was then to cold to sit on so wooden boards were put down. One night a bomb fell nearby and caused our door to jam, we had to shout to others to come and open it up after the all clear sounded.

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