I live in beautiful Victoria, BC Canada – now 88 years old with many memories of Scotland which I left in 1955. I lived in a tenement in the South Side of Glasgow, 3 flights up, from about 2yrs old to until 14 yrs old, then we moved to Edinburgh.
I particularly remember the Clydebank Blitz in March 1941 because my Mum, a pianist, was out playing at a concert and my Dad, myself (9yrs), brother Jack (7yrs) and baby brother Bob (4months) were at home when the sirens sounded. This is what I wrote about that night:
“There were quite a few raids on Glasgow, less than England but serious nonetheless.. The aim was to destroy the shipyards and on March, 1941 a particularly bad raid took place over the shipyards at Clydebank, Glasgow in which a lot of the surrounding buildings were destroyed. My baby brother Bob had been born Nov 15/40, so there were 3 of us then, myself, Jackie and Bob. My Mum was out playing piano at a concert when the sirens sounded. Dad put the three of us in the coal bunker (a cupboard boarded halfway up in which bags of coal were dumped). Coalmen delivered bags of coal every so often, carrying them up 3 flights of stairs. (they are a story in themselves). He gave us our gasmasks and then he made a big pot of strong tea with plenty of sugar and climbed in beside us. Strong tea was supposed to be good for the nerves. The baby had a special gas mask into which he could be fitted. I remember it being made of red rubber and was called a Mickey Mouse mask, maybe because it had decals or something, whereas our masks were black rubber and fitted completely over our faces. Poor Dad, he must have been worried sick! This raid was obviously a bad one and eventually Dad took us down to the entry of the building called the close. This was a narrow open passageway with main floor tenant’s doors and then stairs leading upwards to the other flats. The close had been lined with steel girders and a wall called a Baffle wall lined with sandbags was placed in front of the opening. Apparently it had been noted that when a tenement building had been destroyed, only the close had been left standing. Most of the neighbours gathered there during a raid instead of trying to get to the shelter at the end of the road and speculated on the bombing, which we could hear. A lady on the main floor opened up her home and made endless pots of tea. Dad, of course, was very worried about Mum and I remember, very clearly, hearing a car screech to a halt outside the close and Mum running in screaming “Jack, Jack”. She had managed to get a lift home but on the way she could see buildings on fire or destroyed, hear and see the chaos and firemen and was convinced our building had been hit.
It was a very long night before the all-clear sounded. The next morning we realized how lucky we were. An incendiary bomb had made a direct hit on a chapel just around the corner and a priest had been killed. We kids (no school that day) spent the day picking up shrapnel off the streets and wondered what had happened to all the people in the bombed buildings. Incredible and God Forbid it should ever happen again.
So many memories
