UNTOLD STORIES Remembering Clydebank in Wartime Clydebank Life Story Group Untold Stories ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book is published with financial assistance from: Clydebank Trust West Dunbartonshire Council. West Dunbartonshire Alexander Cross Cameron Fund Council. Awards for All The publishers would like to thank Clydebank Central Library for kind permission to use photographs, and also Faber and Faber for permission to reprint an extract from Burnt Norton, Four Quartets from Collected Poems 1909-1966 by T.S. Eliot. Clydebank Life Story Group would like to thank the following for help and encouragement in bringing the book to publication: Jean Allan, Clydebank Citizens’ Advice Bureau, Wynn Conway, Morison Memorial Church, Alison Miller, Alex McNair, James McNeill J.P., Marion Nimmo. Copyright for the authors by Clydebank Life Story Group © 1999 ISBN 0 9535172 0 9 Published February 1999 by CLYDEBANK LIFE STORY GROUP Seventh printing, 2006. Cover Design by The Graphics Company Edited by Liam Stewart Printed by Clydeside Press Remembering Clydebank in Wartime CONTENTS Page 6 Introduction 10 Esther Elizabeth Bailey 12 Diary of a Child Evacuee Nancy Clunas 15 The Night That Changed My Life Betty Moore 21 Orpheus Choir Bessie Bannister 24 The Blitz and Beyond Ann Fielding 28 A Soldier’s Homecoming John Bowman 31 Home Guard Stuart McKinlay 32 Is There Anyone in There? Margaret Forrest 35 Run Faster, Irene Irene O’Donnell 38 I’m John McCuskey Susie McLaughlin 40 Clydebank High Classmates Kathleen L. Ritchie 43 Church Hall in Douglas Street Catherine McIlhenny 44 Child’s Eye View of War Agnes Watson 50 A Place Called Clydebank James McBride 52 Requesting an Ambulance A.M. 54 My Special Mum “Orphaned” Again Helen McNeill 58 Second Evacuation Fay Kennedy 60 So Much For Government Statistics J. Alistair Robertson 61 Nothing But What We Stood In Christina Brown 62 Air-Raid Warden Helen Robertson 67 Essentials Nettie Paterson 67 Stocking Seams Greta Bailey 68 Sewing Machines to Munitions Margaret McDermid 69 Decision That Saved Our Lives Sam Black 71 Walking Into Baffle Walls Gavin Laird 73 A Letter from the Boss Janet Baxter 76 We are Now at War with Germany Isa McKenzie 80 Communal Radio David Munn 83 Homeward Journey May Fraser 87 Chappie Took the Mickey Denis Kearns 98 Me and the Clydebank Blitz Charles Clunas 108 2 Napier Street Kathleen McConnell 112 I’m Home Safe Mum Anne Harvie Untold Stories 113 La Scala Margaret James 118 Servants’ Entrance V. M. 121 The Wee Black Bag Edith Little 123 There’s No School Today Frances Barclay 126 Evacuees in Helensburgh Patricia Drayton 127 Corned Beef William K.S. Campbell 128 Loss of a Father’s Influence James Bell 130 A.R.P. Duty Jean Golder 131 Steel Shelter Richard Bluer 135 The Night of the Stork Anne Newcome 136 Fish and Chip Shop Emilia Garland 138 Through the Golf Course Nanette Forsyth 138 Kilpatrick Hills Tom Hunter 139 Bowling Green Ellen Cunningham 139 Air-Raid Shelters James Wotherspoon 142 Last Meter was More Full E. L. 144 Held by the Hair Sarah Hughes 145 I Thought You Were Dead Jessie Grieve Gow 149 Did You Get My Frock? H. C. 150 What Should I Do With This, Bob? Helen Beattie 151 Hawthorne Street Shelter Ada Hardie 151 Benbow Hotel Alex Hardie 152 163 Second Avenue Norah Foley 153 Walter Brown’s Mary Brockway 154 Never to Return Moya Horton 155 340 Dumbarton Road Lily Taddeo 156 Good Can Come Out of Bad Alasdair Galloway 158 Poor Gargoyle Mary Dyer 160 Evacuation to Stenhousemuir Mary Wood 162 My Lost Schooling Janet Nairn 164 Getting to Work Claire Kennedy 167 Series of Mental Pictures David Dyer 169 Women Came Into Their Own Myra Brady 171 The 1939 Evacuations Sheila Munn 173 The High Park Ruby Stewart Remembering Clydebank in Wartime 175 First Aid William Bowman 177 Country Evacuation Rena Nimmo 181 Remembering Those Who Died in the Blitz Helen McNeill 184 The Rocks Family Ann Holmes Untold Stories Introduction Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. T.S. Eliot ‘Untold Stories’ began life in an autobiography-writing class in Clydebank College. When recalling their childhoods, a number of the participants found that they were tapping into the same seam – the war years in Clydebank. The idea of making a collection of such memoirs and inviting as many people as possible to contribute grew quickly. Such a collection had not been made before, Denis Kearns assured us, and there was so much to tell. (Indeed, as we go to press, people are still sending their stories or the names of people we should contact for volume two). So Clydebank Life Story Group was born. Betty Moore, whose quiet dignity had moved us all so much as she told the story of her own terrible loss and the bleak aftermath, was another inspiration. The revelation that she had never written of her experiences before was a further impetus, and perhaps a source of the title of the book. We also had the good fortune to have as a member of the group Helen McNeill, whose work in connection with the commemoration of the Clydebank Blitz has gained renown far beyond the local area. A very large proportion of the material in the book (including stories from overseas) is there because of Helen’s prodigious energy and the success of a project she had already initiated. A fellow Blitz Memorial Committee member is Denis Kearns. In her second piece in this book, Helen gives an account of how the committee came into being because a number of Clydebank’s citizens could not live with the Council’s decision to end the annual Blitz Memorial Service. Denis’s conviction on this issue is unflinching. If Clydebank is to continue as a community worth being part of, it has to hold this vital part of its history carefully, like precious water, in both hands. To the book project, Denis has brought this seriousness of purpose as well as a wide and detailed knowledge of the history of the area. But, of course, the book is not a history. It is a gathering point, a place where people can bring their memories and their feelings about their encounters with life and death all those years ago, and reflect on Remembering Clydebank in Wartime how they have come through them. Statistical accuracy can be obtained from other sources. Still, it was with her astonishingly detailed recall that Agnes Watson provided the group with so much stimulation and pleasure. What she remembers with great vividness are the human details which so effectively recreate the life and community of the past. The precious wartime gift of chocolate came in a block of exactly thirty two squares, thirty two obvious opportunities in the eyes of Agnes’s parents, to share the pleasure of the chocolate with friends and neighbours. Thus is the collectivism of those years remembered and brought back to life! Isa McKenzie does something similar in describing the coat she put on as she left the house about to be destroyed in the Blitz. ‘It was a dusky, pink material, with brown fur around the neck and down to the waist. It was fastened by a button at the waist and a toggle-shaped cloth strap at the neck........it was one of the loveliest things I ever had.’ It is as if the coat becomes a symbol of the time and place that was destroyed, and her ability to remember it in detail, some guarantee that not everything was lost. Isa was a later recruit to the group but quickly became an enthusiastic supporter of the project. Two other members, Deirdre Craig and June Galloway who were neither from Clydebank nor old enough to remember the war, nonetheless took an active part in the project, willingly accepting that concentration on this book has meant a temporary suspension of the group’s wider autobiographical activities. In practical matters relating to the creation of a book, Deirdre’s experience in library publishing has been invaluable. June, who is the chairperson of the group, has made wise comments on many aspects of the production, as well as being an active gatherer of material on an outreach basis. Some of the recollections and stories we received were based on taped conversations but most were in the form of the written word, and much of it handwritten, a phenomenon which somehow created more of a sense of direct communication with the authors. The cover design incorporates a section of the pages of copper-plate submitted by James Wotherspoon who, at ninety-nine, is one of the oldest contributors. Have we ended up with a book of the ‘where were you on those nights’ variety? Partly. And that is perhaps what gives the collection its poignancy. But there is much more than that. For instance, there are the sharply Untold Stories varied descriptions of the evacuations, ranging from Denis Kearns’s near idyllic experience at Hill House in Helensburgh, through the risible class snobberies remembered by V.M., to the sadness of Betty Moore’s exile in Blantyre. There are also wider reflections on what it was like to be a child at that time, reflections, for instance about the fragility of innocence and the vague awareness of the strange adult world. People also diverge in their views about post-disaster trauma and other psychological scars. For some, not enough was done for those who suffered; others see the absence of such initiatives as testimony to the greater resilience of the time However, it is the experience, of the nights of the Blitz which predominates.