大象传媒

On Thursday 13th March 1941 over 200 German bombers took off from various European airfields and headed for Clydeside. The raid began on a clear moonlight night at about 9pm and lasted for six hours. This, and the raid that followed is sometimes referred to as the Clydebank Blitz because the shibuilding town to the west of Glasgow received a terrible hammering at the hands of the Luftwaffe. However, there is one district on the west of Glasgow and within the Glasgow boundary that received a considerable amount of bomb damage but for some reason is rarely mentioned in the Blitz literature. That district is Knightswood --a between-the-wars garden suburb with no industry of any note.
At the age of 5 I had just started primary school and lived just across the road in Killoch Drive from the school. When the siren sounded I was ushered hurriedly out of bed, a raincoat put on over my pyjamas and my feet thrust into a pair of wellington boots. We ran across to the Anderson shelter at the back of the garden as bombs began to fall in addition to shrapnel. I was about to descend the few woode steps into the shelter when something made me look up towards the back of my four-in-a block council house. I saw a great crescent shaped multi-coloured flash beyond the roof--my school just across the road in Broadlie Drive had been struck by a parachute mine. The school was serving as a Civil Defence Post. All night we listened to the whistling sound of descending high explosives followed by the sickening 'crump' of the explosions. Houses all around in this purely residential area of Glasgow were being demolished. The next day I went "out to play". Just beyond my gate, in my garden and strewn across slate roofs were bodies and body parts. I was only 5 but I will always remember that. 39 Auxiliery Firemen, ARP nurses and Wardens and one four year old boy(David Wallace) were killed within the school boundary that night. Many others in other parts of Knightswood were killed or injured too.
The following night at the same time the siren went again and another wave of 200 plus bombers returned to Clydeside to start the destruction all over again. Clydebank's trauma has been told many times and rightly so, but few people seem to know anything about Knightswood--except those still alive who were there.

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