大象传媒

MEMORIES OF GROWING UP IN OLD KILPATRICK & BLITZ STORIES

Jean Ferguson (nee Cooper)

On 3rd September 1939 Britain declared war on Germany. It was my birthday that day and I was four years old. Not that I remember that day, but I do remember many days of the war years.

My mother, father and two older sisters (Margaret & Mary) and I lived in Old Kilpatrick, a few miles from Clydebank. We stayed in Canal Bridge House on the Forth and Clyde Canal as my father was the bridge and lock keeper. He was responsible for opening the bridge and lock to let the fishing boats, puffers and barges through. The canal was a busy waterway.

My sisters and I attended Gavinburn Primary School in the village. We had always to remember to take our gas masks with us each day. The gas mask was inside a cardboard box that you slung over your arm. School hours were 9am to 4.30 pm. We had lots of places to play in when we got home from school. There was the glen with a little burn where we would paddle our feet. Sometimes we took a jelly jar with a string attached to the rim and we鈥檇 try to catch 鈥榖aggy minnows鈥� (little fish). Our picnic was a piece and jam and a bottle of water.

My father was kept busy opening and closing the bridge and the locks. We had a punt tied up at the bridge and sometimes my father put us on it for a short sail down the canal.

The A.R.P. (Air Raid Precaution) was an organisation of men who patrolled the streets when the air raid sirens sounded. My father joined at the start of the war. On the night of the Blitz we were all at home when the siren sounded so we hurried to put on our coats and shoes. Our air raid shelter was at the bottom of the garden. These Anderson shelters were made of corrugated iron which everyone covered with earth and big divits. Inside we had wooden forms on each side to sit on and we used a torch and candles. Usually a few blankets were kept there to keep us warm. Sometimes the Red Cross were able to bring us a cup of tea. It was very frightening when the bombs fell around us. The railway ran past the back of our house. One of the bombs fell on the station and our shelter was lifted off its foundations and all the dirt and dust fell on top of us. We were all coughing and choking. My mother opened the shelter door first as my father was coming back to see if we were alright, when suddenly another bomb fell. He was blown off his feet and his tin helmet struck by mother on her forehead. Luckily she only had a small cut. We had to stay in the shelter all night until the 鈥渁ll clear鈥� siren sounded. Because we lived beside the canal a group of firemen was kept there to pump water to put out the fires. That night one of the firemen was killed outside our house. My mother kept us in the shelter until they took him away.

I remember the ground being hot as we walked through the rubble. All the windows in our house had been blown out. It was terrible to see our lovely home in such a mess. We were told by the A.R.P. to go to our village church hall where we had to stay for a few days. We were later sent to Bearsden, near Glasgow, to stay in a huge mansion house. The lady who lived there with her grown-up family was really kind to us. She was a Christian Scientist. I think her name was Mrs. Christie and the house was in Roman Road. We were given clothes from the Red Cross. One day this lady鈥檚 daughter took us to a shop and my two sisters and I got lovely new sandals. This was our home for six weeks before we were moved again to the village of Cardross in Dumbartonshire. My family was allocated a small cottage-type house, one of four in a row. Before moving into this house we had to stay in another big house which was owned by an elderly man. At that time people who had spare rooms had to accommodate families who had no where to stay after they were blitzed. This man was very unkind and was angry at having to share his house. My mother, father, sisters and I all had to stay in just one room upstairs. We had to try to keep quiet as the man was grumpy.
There was a fireplace in the room so we were warm for a few days. When the little coal we had ran out, my mother asked the man for a pailful of coal but he refused to give it to her. Later, when my father came home he was angry and told the man that if he didn鈥檛 fill the pail he鈥檇 report him to the authorities. My father knew that extra coal supplies were given to people who took in lodgers.

My sisters were to start school in Cardross and they got little tan coloured cases for their schoolbooks. I didn鈥檛 get one and remembered being annoyed but I didn鈥檛 know why I wasn鈥檛 to go to school. My sisters never did go to school next day because that night the Blitz began again. The families who stayed in the cottages decided to stay together in one house when the bombing began. All the children sat together on a bed and a young man sang to us. We all joined in. I remember the song 鈥� 鈥淥h Johnny, Oh Johnny how you can love鈥�. The bombing got worse and my mother said that we should all go to the shelters. Suddenly an incendiary bomb came through the roof. It fell on the bed where we had been sitting and the flames shot up. Everyone rushed for the door, but a man blocked the entrance and said it was too dangerous to go outside. My mother gave him a mighty push to one side and everyone scrambled over him. Our parents had only been shown the shelters the previous day, and in the confusion and darkness they couldn鈥檛 find the path. There were lots of bushes and my sisters got scratched. My father carried me on his shoulders. We finally reached the shelter and when we were safely inside my father said that he had to go back to the house. He had a large wooden chest where he stored his old photographs and souvenirs from the First World War when he had served with the Gordon Highlanders. He did manage to get the chest out before the house went up in flames. We still have most of his treasured photographs.

Our house in Old Kilpatrick was restored and we were able to return to Canal Bridge House. My father鈥檚 nieces, May and Sadie, and nephew Archie came to stay with us as they lost their home in the Clydebank Blitz. We had some wonderful times together. Archie was fun, and he knew how to yodel and sing.

The Greenock Blitz

When I was aged 5 and living in Johnstone I saw searchlights probing this way and that in the sky and was told it was because of the war. It was never really explained to me what this 鈥榳ar鈥� that everyone was talking about really meant. I was told when I saw my first barrage balloon that they were to stop the 鈥榳ar鈥� planes getting to us.

We moved to Greenock because of my dad鈥檚 job (he was a railway shunter and later a goods yard guard). He worked in the Dellingburn yard shunting wagons from Scotts to the Victoria Harbour. We stayed in the railway property at 162 Roxburgh Street and shelters were built right up against the rear wall of the back yard for us and number 160, which was also a railway property. Looking back, if a bomb had hit us we鈥檇 have fallen straight down into the Greenock West station! These shelters were made of brick and were divided into compartments 鈥� I think maybe 4 or 6 leading off a passage way. It was for all the world like a corridor on a train, in brick! No windows, of course, but our mothers tried to make us comfortable as much as they could, and each family went to their own compartments when the sirens sounded.

When we moved to Greenock I was enrolled at Highlanders Academy but at some point early on it was turned into a working men鈥檚 hostel to house the men who came to work in the yards. Living at the bottom of Mount Pleasant Street we were sent to Ardgowan School which was then in Nelson Street. But as usual with the thoughtlessness of children we wished that the bombers would come over after midnight so that we could have the morning off school. If we were bombed between 7pm and midnight we ad to do a full day in school the next day.

We went out from the school to collect books, paper and metal goods for salvage. Railings were removed from any place they were not needed for safety purposes.

My outstanding memories of the shelter during a raid are the voice of our next door neighbour leading her large family in the saying of the Rosary drowned out by the whistling of an incendiary bomb and the quiet as everone waited for it to explode. All the time in the background you heard the noise of the Ack-Ack [anti-aircraft] battery on Lyle Hill, where my father served in the Home Guard.

During the Clydebank Blitz, my dad, who was by then a goods guard, spent the night in a tunnel outside Polmadie in Glasgow with wagons loaded with T.N.T. he was taking from Bishopton to somewhere down South.

During the Greenock Blitz my dad was working and my brother had measles, so my mum decided we weren鈥檛 going to the shelter. She made up a bed for us under the table and blocked us in with two chairs she stretched out on. Next morning the sky was blood red and our window sills were covered in shrapnel. There was a crater across the street. I鈥檒l always remember one night when the siren sounded and we were joined by one of our near neighbours, Mrs. Miller. She was a big, fat lady and wore a big hat, but as she ran to the shelter held a big cushion on top of her head, as if it would protect her from the bombs. It looked so funny and I remember my mother telling me off for laughing at her. She was probably terrified and must have thought that she鈥檇 be safer in our shelter.

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