大象传媒

I was aged four when war broke out, so I don't remember much about that grand occasion. However, I clearly recollect the day my father received his call-up papers. My parents were a very loving couple, always kissing, cuddling and frolicking, but there was an air of sadness that day.

The next thing I remember was being taken down to Dundee's West Station, where the platform was packed with men heading for the war and their womenfolk and children waving goodbye. I was being held in either my mother's or an aunt's arms, as the platform was awash with tears. "Daddy's going away to fight Hitler," I remember saying. Oh, I may have been only four, but I knew a thing or two. I knew about nasty Mister Hitler, but was a little unsure what Daddy was going to do to him. Punch his nose, perhaps? That would sort him out. No, Daddy was joining the RAF, so maybe he would drop a bomb on him instead. Either way, Mister Hitler would not be happy and Daddy would be back home within a few days.

Well, things didn't quite work out the way I had expected. The street gas lamp-posts and our stair lights were extinguished. It was very, very dark at night. We could carry a little torch but were not allowed to shine it up into the sky, in case "the Jerries" saw it. Lamp-posts and trees had white bands painted on them, so that we wouldn't bump into them in the dark. Over the next few years I was not afraid of the blackness : nobody was going to jump out of a closie and pinch my torch. At school we were each issued with a gas mask. Now, this DID scare me - I was afraid of suffocating. To this day, when I smell fresh rubber, I smell gas mask !

Concrete shelters sprouted all over the place but some people never used them. We lived in a tenement at 35 Baldovan Terrace, and when the air-raid siren sounded, everyone gathered in one of the ground-floor houses - they weren't known as "flats" in those days - everyone including Bonzo, a neighbour's Airedale that I loved. My mother and I lived on the top storey, so presumably, in the event of our tenement being hit by a bomb, by sitting downstairs we wouldn't have so far to fall!

One night a bomb did land in nearby Baxter Park, a direct hit on an underground shelter, which was, fortunately, empty at the time. As I said, a neighbour's house was regarded as being safer than any of those dark, smelly, new-fangled shelters. "It's landed in the back green," I said, not realising that if it HAD landed there, we would have known nothing about it. I think it was that bomb which threw a massive rock towards Glebelands Primary School and it crashed through a classroom ceiling.

Two other bombs landed nearby, but I cannot recall any deaths. In fact, I don't think they even exploded. The west end of Dundee was less fortunate, with a tenement being wiped out in Rosefield Street. (For a first-hand account of this bombing, see "The Night the Bombs Fell on Dundee" by Lily R. Fox, under Dundee Central Library.)

Our two-roomed house was lit by gas and heated by coal fires. We also had the luxury of an inside toilet, instead of having to share one with neighbours on the stair. A wind-up gramophone provided music, with the first record I can remember being a jolly number, "The Whistler and his Dog". (I never really took a shine to dogs after Bonzo, but have been a life-long whistler, with that original favourite still being part of my repertoire!). We also had a wireless set, which was powered by a big glass accumulator. This had a gauge which pointed to Full, Half or Empty. A spare accumulator was kept handy and the empty one was taken to Mr. Strachan's grocer shop at the bottom of the street for charging. Once I was strong enough to attend to this task, I was sent down on my own - despite the accumulator containing acid ! Nowadays my mother would have received a visit from "the Social", if not the police.

Mr. Strachan also kept a stock of second-hand comics. There was no charge for them - we just took our own comics in when we were finished and swapped for something different. Once they had been thoroughly thumbed, the comics were collected for salvage, or recycling as we say nowadays.

Meanwhile, Daddy was touring the world. Having been a clerk in a jute office, he was given an appropriate posting in the RAF - as a radio operator. (No, I can't see the connection either.) Back home, my mother was enjoying herself so much that she went out on the razzle at nights, whilst I was left alone at home. At the age of six I was taken by my father's sisters to live with them and my grandparents in Eden Street at the foot of the park - a house which had electricity instead of gas lighting ! Unfortunately I had been taken from my natural environment and did not enjoy those early years. I knew my mother loved me and wanted

me back to live with her, but it was not to be.

My father sent me countless airgraphs and of course I replied once I had learned to write. A painstaking job to be sure but one I enjoyed, the constant interflow of letters keeping us close. I received news and photographs from exotic-sounding Middle East places, such as Alexandria and Benghazi. There was a snapshot of Daddy on a camel beside the Sphinx - but where was Hitler?

I knew about people sending food parcels, 'comforts' to the troops, but the scheme worked the opposite way for me, with my father sending big tins of boiled sweets from Egypt. One sweet in particular had a very distinctive flavour, not unlike Euthymol toothpaste, and only recently I came across a perfect match - Sainsbury's Root Beer. Later he was to move to Goose Bay in Canada (Canadian chocolate and sweeties) then to Elgin in the north of Scotland (boxes of fresh eggs - not as good as chocolate but a welcome change from dried egg ! The boxes were posted back for re-use).

Unknown to me, my mother linked up with an American 'GI' and my parents divorced. On one of his visits home my father brought with him a girl friend, Etta, who was in the WRAF. She was a lovely girl : I really liked her and would have gladly accepted her as my new mother, but the romance fizzled out. Honestly鈥rown-ups鈥� they are so fickle!

When I was about nine or ten, my father was posted to Leuchars in Fife, so I was able to visit him. Two of my aunts and I crossed on the Fifie (the ferry over the Tay between Dundee and Newport) and walked the whole six miles. I was absolutely puggled, but the one thing that kept me going - apart from meeting Daddy - was the promise of a bus run back. Alas, it turned out there was no bus, so we had to hoof it. It still puzzles me how I managed to make it back home alive. What didn't help was that I lost a glove somewhere 'twixt Leuchars and Dundee, but fortunately I was not sent back to find it!

I honestly do not believe my father saw much of the war, or perhaps he kept quiet on the disturbing bits, but it somehow managed to end with or without his interference. Victory in Europe was a time to celebrate : we held a street party with folding tables borrowed from the parish kirk and benches filched from our air-raid shelters. Where the food came from is anybody's guess, but our ladyfolk knew how to 'make do' and we, the bairns, were deliriously happy. We later commandeered our own air-raid shelter as a gang hut. We didn't actually have a gang, but we had a hut!

Looking back, the war was an exciting time for us. We had a day's schooling each week in nearby Park Church hall, presumably to avoid a whole generation being wiped out in the event of a direct hit at the school. Our teacher, Miss Fairlie, was married in that church and we were allowed to sit in the gallery. It was a rather weepy occasion, but we did not lose her - she returned under a different name.

I was briefly evacuated to Arbroath, seventeen miles away. The kindly lady who looked after me had a tortoise in her back garden, and her home was opposite Keptie Pond with its fairy-tale 'castle'. Since then, when visiting the area, I think of Snow White singing "I'm Wishing" and "Some Day My Prince Will Come", so I must have been taken to the cinema in Arbroath to see that wonderful new Disney feature.

The large range of fizzy drinks shrank to just a few flavours, with little collar labels replacing the large colourful ones. There was no distinction between makes - they were all issued by SCF, Soft Drinks Industry. It was not until after the war that the brand names reappeared, including our own Barrie's and Robertson's of Dundee and Lamb's of Forfar. Sweeties were also very scarce but cough sweets were not rationed, so my friends and I survived largely on Zubes, Megazones, Dr. Smile's Pastilles, Throaties and Victory V Gums and Lozenges. The latter were particularly potent, as they contained, as well as liquorice, ether and chloroform, but they certainly kept us going. It also seemed patriotic to buy sweeties named Victory V.

Mr. Forbes (Forbie), whose paper shop was at the top of Lilybank Road, had a plentiful supply of fruit. We yanked our pullovers out and he filled them with small pears and apples for a penny. They were 'hard as neeps' and sour, but they were food! Also in Lilybank Road, directly opposite our school, was the Homestyle Bakery. This, to me, was sheer heaven. Their cakes tasted as good as they looked, with my favourite being the rectangular, slightly burned rhubarb tarts, from which the juice ran down our chins. I would gladly have lived the rest of my life feasting on their cakes, with Victory V lozenges for dessert !

Just down from the bakery, Mr. Lorimer could slake our thirst with a ha'penny (later a penny) Vantas. This was a weak, flat, sort of cherry/berry-flavoured drink, which was provided in a wide assortment of containers - even sauce bottles. The Vantas had to be consumed in his shop, so that the bottle could be re-used. Glass was never destroyed - jam jars were returned to the grocer and from there sent back to the factory.

Those of us who lived in 3 Eden Street were unable to 鈥淒ig for Victory鈥�, as our modest drying-green was largely taken up with an air-raid shelter (which I cannot remember ever being used). Across Arbroath Road, however, it was a different story. Baxter Park was divided into two areas - the genteel upper part, which was for 'strolling' amongst the flowerbeds (Keep Off the Grass!) or listening to the band, and the lower section for playing. A good chunk of the latter part was given over to local people for growing food. Of course, boys being boys, we made the occasional foray to relieve the poor gardeners of their peapods. We were never destructive, and took no more than a handful. To this day I regard our conduct as fair game rather than theft. They were, after all, growing vegetables to feed the nation - and we were part of that nation, surely!

We played a lot in the street but the park was our adventure playground. The bushes were so thick that, had Adolph taken a stroll through the park, he would never have found us. Why, we could even hide for days from Mr. Campbell the 'parkie', and he was a lot worse than Hitler !

Bombwise, we were fortunate in Dundee, despite having an important shipyard, the Caledon, I have no idea why so few planes reached our city to wipe us out. I mean, in addition to the Caledon there were the editors of the Dandy and Beano, who apparently featured on Hitler's hit list, due to their constant lampooning of Der Great F眉hrer. Perhaps this was the reason I kept on reading those comics whilst my contemporaries were moving on to more serious titles, such as Rover, Hotspur and Wizard.

Aunt Peggy, my life-long friend who died in 2003 aged 92, worked in D.M. Brown's, one of four major department stores in Dundee. She, along with other staff members, had to take her turn at night 'fire-watching' on the roof of the building. They were trained on the use of stirrup-pumps and how to negotiate a smoke-filled hut, but their boss had an unofficial word of advice for them. He said that, in the event of any incendiary bombs landing, they were to head for the fire escape. Their lives were more important than the store. It seemed a waste of time to be there, then, but it had to be done. The nearby cinema, Her Majesty's, was less fortunate, and this burned down, taking the life of a young spool-boy with it.

Peggy was later directed to work in a munitions factory. Her doctor wrote to the authorities to let them know she would be physically unable to work in that environment, but his plea was ignored. There was a war on, and everyone had to play their part. Within a few days Peggy

collapsed and could not return to work for over a year. When she did, it was to an office job in DM's, as her legs were too weak to allow her to remain standing at the counter. She never did completely recover and remained in constant pain to the end.

My father died when I was 21 and I lost my very best friend. Still, unlike many other people, at least he survived the war, which meant I was able to enjoy his company for ten years more than some.

Nowadays there are two things which are guaranteed to send a shiver up my spine when I hear them. One is Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus", which we sang on our last day at Morgan Academy, and the other is the wail of an air-raid siren, not the steady all-clear but the rising and falling sound which warned of enemy planes approaching.

Jimmy Smith via Dundee Central Library

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