大象传媒

My husband was five years old when the siren sounded to warn of enemy planes. Kilmarnock had not featured very much in the war so far but for his family and neighbours that was about to change.

When the siren sounded his mother gathered him from bed in the upstairs flat and took him to the agreed "safe place" which was under the stairs of the flat below. That action saved their lives. Three bombs were dropped, one hit their block of flats killing three neighbours. The story told was that planes returning from Clydebank spotted fire from a passing train on the railway line, which ran beside Culzean Crescent. One of the other bombs hit the nearby cemetery.

The survivors of the bombing were my husband and his mother and the parents and daughter of the flat they had gone to for shelter.

My husband's father had been at work as a chauffeur and when he heard the first bomb, ran home, not stopping to ask if he could take a car. He knew it was his area that had been hit.

His parents were extremely grateful to have survived. They lost all their possessions but most distressing was the fact that the next day his father received his call up papers and was immediately dispatched as a driver with the Royal Air Force. He spent the next four years driving in Egypt, Greece and Italy.

After the war ended the block of flats was rebuilt and the two surviving families returned there. His mother took the ground floor flat and lived there until 1994 when her health deteriorated and she required full time care. She died in 1997.

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