WW2 MY TEENAGE YEARS, 1939 TO 1945 (Part 1)

Part 1: (Wartime School Days)

Declaration of War — Dunkirk - Battle of Britain - Bombs on Clydeside — Evacuation - Air Training Corps — Death in the Family — Volunteer for RAF. (cont’d. Part 2)

On 9th. May 1939 I celebrated my 13th.Birthday. In March of that year, Hitler’s Wehrmacht had marched into Czechoslovakia. Soon afterwards, on 1st. September, German tanks and bombers struck at Poland. Britain and France issued a Final Ultimatum. War was imminent.

I remember, very clearly, the Declaration of War on 3rd. September, 1939. We had taken a Sunday morning drive — my father, sister and I — to the north of Glasgow, near Drymen where we stopped to listen to the Prime Minister’s radio announcement. At 11.15 a.m. Neville Chamberlain told us, in sombre tones, that “…this country is at war with Germany”. My father, a veteran of WW1, wounded in 1917 as a teenage Gordon Highlander in the 3rd. Battle of Ypres, grieved. I expressed a foolish hope that the War would “last long enough for me to get into it”. For that I had an ear clipped by an angry father and told that, if it did, I would regret it!

Air Raid drills, blackout and rationing apart, life went on for some time almost as normal. My education continued at St. Mirin’s Academy, Paisley whence I travelled daily across the River Clyde by the Yoker Ferry. German bombers began attacks on shipping targets and on the Forth Bridge. On 28th.October, 1939 the first Luftwaffe Heinkel HE111 was shot down in Scotland, near Dalkeith.

The “Phoney War” terminated abruptly in May, 1940 with the German “Blitzgrieg” through Belgium and Holland, into France. At this dark hour, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of an all-party Government, promising only “blood, toil, tears and sweat.” By the end of May, France was doomed. Scotland’s 51st. Highland Division was trapped at
St. Valery and most forced to surrender. Nearly 350,000 British and French troops were evacuated in “the miracle” of Dunkirk. Some evacuated French soldiers arrived near us, at a school in Knightswood. As a 14 year-old, I had opportunity to practice my schoolboy French. However, they soon departed, some to join the Free French Forces, but most repatriated to Vichy France. By 4th. June, Churchill was telling us “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.” The country braced for invasion. The Battle of Britain began.

Every teenage boy wanted to be a Fighter Pilot. As soon as I could, I joined the Air Training Corps. Before that stage, however, the country endured the full weight of the Luftwaffe offensive. By September 1940 the Royal Air Force had won the hard-fought Battle of Britain, downing hundreds of German bombers and fighters. Furiously, the Nazis turned their terror on major British cities. One Saturday morning in Summer, 1940 I had my first experience of aerial bombardment. A lone German plane launched a stick of bombs at the Clyde shipyards near my home at Scotstoun West (Dumbarton Road). The bombs fell on tenement buildings in nearby Langholm Street killing many civilians, mainly women and children. I watched as the rescuers removed the maimed and broken bodies of neighbours.

Other cities fared much worse. In November, Coventry was razed by nearly 500 bombers, its city and famous Cathedral destroyed. London, the main and nightly target of “the Blitz”, was fire-bombed in December, creating a ring of flame and destruction around St. Paul’s Cathedral. Many more thousands of British civilians died.

The Luftwaffe stepped up its bombing offensive in the spring of 1941, hitting hard at London, Plymouth, Birmingham, Merseyside and Cardiff. It was Clydeside’s turn on the 13th. March. My mother was in hospital at that time and my sister, Mary, staying temporarily with our Grandmother in Hamilton Street, Clydebank. The sirens sent us that evening to the brick Air Raid Shelter in our back yard, while hundreds of enemy bombers blasted neighbouring Clydebank, destroying much of the town. Next morning thousands of homeless refugees streamed up Dumbarton Road seeking sanctuary in Glasgow institutions. Because of casualty pressures, my mother was sent home from hospital prematurely. The bombing continued relentlessly on 14th.and 15th. March, damaging 90% of Clydebank homes and rendering over 50,000 people homeless. My sister and Grandmother spent nights of terror, ringed around by fires and rubble, before evacuation.

At this point it was decided that my sister and I should be evacuated to the mining village of Longriggend. My father took us there and, because of numbers of evacuees, he and I were billeted for the first night in a wooden hut serviced by a coke stove. Unfortunately, the stove leaked noxious fumes into the hut. Luckily, my father awoke in the early dawn and dragged me, pale and half-conscious, into a winter landscape where I was violently sick in the snow. We returned to Dumbarton Road that day.

Further air raids on Glasgow followed on 7th.and 8th.April, and on the 5th.and 8th.of May. I celebrated my 15th.Birthday with an “All Clear” on 9th. May, 1941.
Failing to destroy the R.A.F., to intimidate the Royal Navy, or subdue the British people by bombing, Hitler called halt to his invasion plan (“Operation Sealion”), and turned his attention to the Nazi’s next major target — the Soviet Union. The sudden attack on Russia in June, 1941 not only brought respite to Britain, it turned the vocal communist elements of “Red Clydeside” from vigorous opponents of the “Capitalists’ War” to enthusiastic promoters of the “Peoples’ War”! “Aid for our Soviet Allies”, and a “Second Front”, became the new and urgent demands.

While battle ebbed to and fro in North Africa, December 1941 saw a treacherous and highly damaging Japanese attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour — Japan’s “Day of Infamy”. The “good news” for Britain was that America was finally in the War; the “bad news” soon followed with Japanese occupation of Hong Kong on Christmas Day, 1941 and Singapore in February and Rangoon in March, 1942, followed by other Far Eastern disasters.

Now 16, while still studying for my Scottish Higher Leaving Certificate, I became a fully-fledged member of the A.T.C., with part-time study of Morse, Navigation and Flight Theory, training for duty with the R.A.F. Battle raged in the Atlantic, in North Africa, and in the air with British and American Air Forces now mass-bombing German cities. In November, Church bells rang out in celebration of our victory at El Alamein where the reconstituted 51st. Highland Division had played an important part. The tide of war was turning.

On 7th. January 1943 my mother died suddenly of cerebral haemorrhage, aged 41, with disastrous consequence for the family. My father was unable to work and look after 3 children aged 16, 12 and 6. My sister, Mary, returned to stay with her Grandmother in Clydebank, my brother Kenneth was taken into care by an Uncle and Aunt in Tomintoul, (Banffshire) my father’s birthplace. I continued my studies at St. Mirin’s Academy, Paisley.

Meanwhile, the War progressed more favourably. In January, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met at Casablanca to plan the course of the War and demand “unconditional surrender” by Hitler’s forces. On 23rd.January, the British 8th. Army entered Tripoli in Libya, and the Pipes and Drums of the Gordon Highlanders played Retreat in the Piazza Italia. On the Russian Front, Field Marshal Paulus sought the surrender of his Armies at Stalingrad, a great Soviet victory. In May, the remaining Axis troops in North Africa surrendered to British and American forces, opening the way for the invasion of Sicily, soon to follow.

Problem arose with my education. Schools found that older students were being called-up for military service before they could complete their examinations. Now 17, my 5th. Form was suddenly conjoined with the School’s 6th. Form, thus attempting the Scottish Senior Leaving Certificate one year ahead of schedule. While I was still able to gain passes in Higher English, Mathematics and French, as well as Lower History, Arithmetic and Latin, the grades did not give me University entry.

At the end of 1943 came the sad news that my Cousin, Flight Sergeant Alexander Gordon, 269 Squadron, Royal Air Force had been killed in action on Christmas Day.

At 17 and a half, I was now free to follow my military ambitions, and in March 1944, I volunteered for RAF aircrew. All went well with aptitude tests at the RAF Recruit Centre in Edinburgh but, on final Medical Examination, the sight of my left eye was found deficient and my aircrew selection was cancelled. A subsequent National Service Medical Board graded me A1 for the Army.

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