Lanarkshire Childhood Memories of WWII

Lanarkshire was a route for the bombers making their way to Clydeside. I was aged 5 in 1941, so 9 when it ended. We were not short of food. We went to school as normal, except that we had to carry a gas mask - I had a Micky Mouse one. I remember one year I had to be carried to school as the snow was too deep to walk. I remember the blackouts and using shutters on the windows and someone would check that we all had them on, there were only 13 houses and one of the men was an ARP warden.

My mother's cousin came home on leave and said he wasn't going back; he didn't hide or anything, but the Military Police came to take him back to his unit - he was in the Navy. Mother worked in the Land Army first, then in a munitions factory where she had a 2 hour journey to work in Glasgow; she was making tiny parts for aircraft. My father was killed in WWII. but I don't have any information about how he died - I never knew him.

I remember the Italian Prisoners of War, Granny used to say to treat them well as they were someone's sons. I remember convoys coming from England, Carlisle maybe, going to the barracks in Lanark and coming though our hamlet, Burnfoot, and we used to wave to the soldiers who would wave back. There were dances at the Miners' Welfare Hall, which had a beautiful dancefloor.

A woman came - from Burbage I think - who had a knitting machine for making socks and the women would give her the wool and she would make socks for their men. They used to make up parcels for the soldiers and send them scarves and socks, cigarettes and biscuits. The men would send postcards that were hand embroidered and they were very expressive of their emotions, terms of endearment. I remember the end of the war and tickertape being dropped in the hamlet and the pilots waving to us.

The grown ups were protective of us kids - they didn't discuss things in front of us. I remember we had a small tin of Bantam coffee and the adults used to be very sparing in making coffee with just the amount the size of my pinkie fingernail.

We had land and grew our own vegetables, but there was a bartering system; they used to get a stone of flour at a time and bake every Friday and they would share it around. We also used to swap papers or magazines and comics around the different houses.