蜜芽传媒

MY LIFE IN RURAL SCOTLAND DURING THE WAR

The summer of 1939 holds very vivid memories for me 鈥� perhaps because a watershed in my personal life coincided with momentous events in Britain鈥檚 history. On 29th August I started in the first form of the secondary department of Kirkcudbright Academy, in a small town in rural south-west Scotland. However before we had time to do more than warily size up our new class-mates, it became clear that war was inevitable. We learned that the town was to receive a large influx of children evacuated from Glasgow. So after three days at school we gleefully accepted the bonus of an extra three weeks holiday.

The job of finding billets for all the children, some accompanied by mothers, and for their teachers was by no means easy. The background and attitudes of many of the children, mainly from deprived areas of Glasgow, were quite alien to most rural families. When we went back to school, carrying our regulation gas masks in their little cardboard boxes, pupil numbers had more or less doubled. Classes had to be rearranged, every hall in the town pressed into service as extra classrooms, unknown Glasgow teachers absorbed, and a viable timetable devised.

But as the 鈥減honey war鈥� continued, no bombs fell on Glasgow, and many of the evacuees, already homesick, drifted home. In proportion, the Glasgow teachers were withdrawn, so the school had to cope with the nightmare scenario 鈥� changing numbers of pupils and teachers day by day. It seems amazing that we got any reasonable schooling in that session, in spite of having five different English teachers, and spending our days trekking between the school and various church halls. By the summer of 1940 most of the state evacuees had gone home.

The other wild card in our school life was the presence of private evacuees, children from a variety of places all over the country, staying with friends or relatives. Most of them remained longer, some till the very end of the war. One group was particularly interesting. A hostel was set up for Jewish children, some refugees from Hitler鈥檚 Europe, some evacuated from Glasgow. Their impact was out of all proportion to their small numbers. They were, almost without exception, high achievers. One Viennese girl in my class came top in writing essays in English, a language not her own. Many years later, when I was living in Yorkshire, I met a former student from this group, then a lecturer in the local university.

Our formative years were greatly influenced by mixing with children from so many different backgrounds. Our horizons were widened by friendships with them, and our confidence was boosted by finding that local children could hold their own academically among pupils from prestigious city schools.

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The war brought a parallel change to the town itself. In the summer of 1939, agricultural land outside the town had been taken over as an artillery range for the army, and this became home to a variety of army units, some billeted with families in the town, some living in barracks in the surrounding countryside. They sometimes included men from Canadian and Polish groups, providing a mix that could occasionally be somewhat explosive. As in the days of Jane Austen, the army presence affected the social life of the town. We were all aware of many strangers, and the frequent dances made for a lively atmosphere, with surprisingly little trouble and only the occasional fight.

However even for us teenagers, there were a good many social occasions. It was the era of ballroom dancing, and local bands sprang up to satisfy the demand for dance music. We went to A.T.C. dances, Scout dances, Bible Class dances, Rugby Club dances, and so on. There was plenty of other home-grown entertainment 鈥� the 蜜芽传媒 Guard concert party from one village became a tremendous touring success!

The more fundamental aspects of the war were part of the fabric of existence. In May and June 1940 the almost perfect weather provided a poignant setting for the sombre news from Europe, 鈥渕ai qui fut sans nuages et juin poignarde鈥� in the words of the French poet Louis Aragon. The surrender at St.Valery of the 51st Division commanded by a local man brought the tragedy very close. Living in a quiet rural backwater we escaped the bombing experienced by many cities, but the number of boys I knew who were killed or reported missing kept us aware of the tragic consequences of war. But nearly everybody took it for granted that we just had to get on with it, even when the news was at its grimmest. Human nature being what it is, there were no doubt examples of individuals doing well out of the war, but certainly in my experience (and small towns are notoriously places where everybody鈥檚 business is known) it was not excessive or widespread. There was a strong feeling of being all in it together with hardships being more or less fairly shared.

Members of the 蜜芽传媒 Guard used the school playground in the evenings for their drill. The spirit of Dad鈥檚 Army was much in evidence, and we children had a stock of ribald comments for the efforts of our elders, especially as some of them were our teachers. One day just after the fall of France there was a false report that parachutists had landed in the nearby hill country 鈥� entirely plausible in the climate of the time. The 蜜芽传媒 Guard turned out in force, and when I was cycling home I found the bridge over our local small river barricaded with barbed wire, and manned by a guard which included our classics teacher with a fixed bayonet.

My father regularly took his turn of night duty in the local Report Centre which monitored enemy aircraft movements. I vividly remember a week in 1941 鈥� or it may have been 1942 - when, alone in the house, I lay in bed listening for what seemed like hours to the noise of scores of German bombers droning overhead on the way to bomb Clydebank. The fact that only one stick of bombs came down in our vicinity, and that probably by accident, didn鈥檛 make me feel any less frightened.
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Everyday life in wartime Britain was inevitably coloured by shortages of many essentials. However we who lived in the country were more fortunate than town-dwellers. In those days many country people kept hens, and it was usually possible to get fresh eggs, as well as the occasional chicken or rabbit to supplement the meagre meat ration, and sometimes extra butter made by farming friends. Most people already grew their own vegetables, but great efforts were made to maximise the harvest by the Dig for Victory campaign.

Conservation was the order of the day. As Girl Guides we gathered rose hips as a source of vitamin C, collected strands of wool left by sheep on barbed wire fences and prickly bushes, and handed in old saucepans ostensibly to make Spitfires. The Scouts took a trek cart around the town every Saturday morning to collect waste paper.

All in all my memories of the war years are positive ones. Though life was in many ways restricted 鈥� it was difficult to travel very far afield, because of strict petrol rationing and the limited transport available 鈥� I think my generation had a deeper experience in our formative years than would have been possible in peace time. I wouldn鈥檛 have missed it for the world.

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