INDEX
- Introduction
- The Land Mines
- The Germans are Coming?!
- Our Super Seniors
- The School in Wartime
- What the Papers Said
- Verse & Worse!
- VE Day and Welcome Home
- The Blairskaith Bomber
Introduction
During the Second World War Strathblane, in common with many other villages, was organised into areas to respond in case of enemy attack. Villagers were encouraged to attend the various Auxiliary Fire Service demonstrations and to “man the pumps”! With many of the men away fighting, women were quite often involved in these activities and the village seemed as well prepared as other neighbouring rural communities.
The Home Guard was a feature of the village. People were reminded not to leave white washing out at night and to observe the blackout. Even Halloween was affected by the war due to problems regarding the blackout. Air Raid Protection (ARP) lectures were common and the Ministry of Information van would arrive on a monthly basis for propaganda purposes. Red Cross and War Weapon weeks occurred on a regular basis and all in the parish would be encouraged to take part in these events. The Women’s Guild were involved in “Comforts for the Services” and would send knitted goods etc abroad. “Dig for Victory” was a popular war slogan as more fields were ploughed in the area to produce food.
Strathblane was viewed by the authorities as a relatively safe location, which led to the decision to allocate billets in local homes for unaccompanied children from areas likely to be bombed.
The Landmines
However this relative calm was shattered by the terrible Clydebank Blitz which began on the night of March 13 1941. As well as conventional bombs the German Luftwaffe air raids involved dropping landmines – large canisters armed with a delayed firing mechanism that descended by parachute and were intended to cause major disruption to infrastructure.
On the second night of the Blitz, Friday 14 March, two of these dreadful weapons landed on Blanefield, a mere six miles from Clydebank as the bomber flies. Although only one exploded, after landing on the roof of the New City Row of tenement apartments then rolling down the hill towards the lower Sunnyside block, the impact was massive.
On that evening around 9.45pm, joiner’s son Tom Rennie was standing outside his home at 5 New City Row with his uncle when they spotted a parachute descending. Realising it was a parachute mine falling towards the roof of the building, Tom ran to fetch the police. By now the mine had rolled down the roof and fallen to the ground. Tom remembers being blown off his feet by the subsequent blast. At the police station, then located at 56/58 Glasgow Road, beside the then Netherton Inn, he found PC Fraser and Charles Edmonstone, the officer in charge of the Home Guard. They organised a rescue party.
At 10 New City Row, railway surfaceman John Stockdale, aged 56, was found dead, sitting in a chair, apparently killed outright by the blast. Next door, at Number 11 there were three more casualties: 40-year-old Margaret Wood and her two children 11-year-old Isabella and John, aged nine. Margaret and Isabella were already dead but John was still alive, though he had a broken skull. Sadly, he had died by the time the ambulance reached the Western Infirmary in Glasgow.
It is a bitter irony that the Wood family lived in Govan, close to the docks, which were being heavily bombed. The family had arrived in Blanefield only a few days beforehand, brought there by their father, Jack, a mechanical engineering instructor. They were to stay at 11 New City Row, which was rented by Jack’s parents, James and Isabella. It was considered a safe haven, away from the Clydeside bombing. (Jack, at the family home that night in Southcroft St, Govan, would survive the war.)
After the initial confusion caused by the landmine, people were evacuated from the area to the Edmonstone Hall. The discovery of a second, unexploded landmine in the bushes behind the hall resulted in the bewildered residents being evacuated again, this time to the Kirkhouse Inn. At a reminiscence session, one participant remembered an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) man walking in front of the group with a gun and stopping a bus coming the other way for fear of the vibration detonating the mine. Margaret McIntyre of Milndavie Crescent recalls her father telling her that he helped to defuse the mine near the Edmonstone Hall with a bent coin.
As the Kirkhouse Inn was already crammed with evacuees, the villagers piled into a bus for a hair-raising journey with no lights along to Lennoxtown and over the Crow Road to Fintry with the fires from Clydebank and searchlights illuminating the sky. The bus finally disgorged its passengers at Balfron High School. Thence some were able to stay with family and others could return to their homes. Those whose homes were destroyed were billeted out in the area.
Jim Brown was five years old and lived at 3 Wood Place, overlooking Sunnyside and New City Row. He was visiting his father in Blackpool, where he was stationed with the RAF, on the night of the blast: “We’d no sooner got there than we were told to come home. The house was a mess with the door and windows put in and a big crack down the inside wall. But neighbours helped us fix it up. Some houses were wrecked and others seemed OK. I suppose it depended on the angle of the blast.” The houses at the bottom of New City Row were eventually demolished as was the adjacent block known as Sunnyside. A full 200 yards away, the blast shattered the windows of the old school, which had to close for several days.
As one would expect, this tragedy severely affected both the Wood and Stockdale families. Jack Wood’s father James, died of “senile debility and heart failure” in 1946. Jack moved into the prefabs in Dumbrock Crescent with his mother and brother. Later they moved to Milndavie Crescent. A neighbour, Marion Harvey, born in 1946, remembers Jack Wood often visiting their home to play with her and her brother: “He used to visit our house because he missed his children.” He suffered from depression for the rest of his life and died in 1979.
John Stockdale’s wife, Elspeth, spent much of her life in a mental hospital and living with a relative, after suffering severe post-natal depression following the birth of their son, also John, in 1921. John Junior was brought up with cousins. Having witnessed his father’s death in 1941, John died of stomach cancer in 1947, aged only 25. He is buried in Strathblane Cemetery.
It has been suggested that an enemy plane saw the sparks from a train passing through Blanefield when the landmines were dropped. (Long heavily-laden trains carrying ammunition from the huge stores around Gartmore and Aberfoyle frequently rolled through the village at night.) It was also suggested that a person of Italian descent who lived in the village, and was known to flaunt the blackout, opened a door to signal to the planes as they flew over.
Alternatively, perhaps they were simply jettisoning their load to gain height to escape the anti-aircraft guns based at Mugdock and return to Germany.
In March 1997 Strathblane Community Council erected a plaque in the cemetery in memory of the four civilians killed by the landmine at New City Row.
The Germans are Coming?!
It’s hard to imagine today but during the Second World War there was a very real fear that the Germans would invade Scotland and might even come marching up the A81. In 1940 the disastrous Norwegian campaign, the speed with which France was overrun and the successful but humiliating Allied retreat from Dunkirk, left the British Government fearing an imminent German invasion.
Men were encouraged to join the Local Defence Volunteers, better known as the Home Guard (or “Dad’s Army”) and many in Strathblane answered the call. They were largely exempt tradesmen or older men who had seen service in the First World War, including Charles (later Sir Charles) Edmonstone. Road signs were removed. Jim Brown (b.1935) remembers that even the name “Strathblane” on the community’s war memorial was covered in concrete.
In June 1940 every household received a government-produced leaflet entitled If the Invader Comes, which was hardly reassuring.The Clydebank Blitz and the dropping of a parachute landmine on 14 March 1941 on New City Row in Blanefield, killing four civilians, must have raised anxiety further.
However, if the Germans imagined they could take over Strathblane with scant opposition, they did not know the people! Alastair Wallace, of The Old Manse, born in 1943, proudly displays a bricked-up section of his garden wall, where there was a gun emplacement. As he explains: “It was positioned to catch the enemy as they slowed to go under the railway bridge which spanned the road at that time.”
Sir Archibald Edmonstone, born in 1934, points out two concrete embankments on the south side of the road at Blairquhosh near Glengoyne Distillery. This is all that remains of the “Blairquhosh Tank Trap”: “Chains or wires were to be strung across the road. The idea was to stop a tank (or more realistically an armoured vehicle) at which point the Home Guard in the trench behind the embankment would open fire with their rifles or whatever. I must admit that it was a bit ‘Captain Mannering’. The trench has now been filled in but the concrete blocks are still there.” He is glad “the trap” was never put to the test!
In July 1942 the Regional Commissioner for Scotland issued the Handbook for Invasion Committees in Scotland. This required local invasion committees to inform the government of lines of defence adopted and enlist the help of the public in carrying out government instructions. The Home Guard would take over arrangements for the cooking and distribution of food. Church bells were to be rung in the event of a nearby airborne enemy landing.
In March 1943, David McGregor, a mechanic at the garage at Yarrow House and secretary of the Blanefield & Strathblane Invasion Committee (sic!), circulated members to inform them that an invasion exercise, codenamed “Exercise Kessog”, was to take place on Sunday 18 April to test local preparedness. The scenario envisaged was that 500 enemy paratroopers had landed near Killearn.
At 2pm the committee was to erect a roadblock on Old Strathblane Road. Simultaneously a mortar bomb would supposedly demolish The Netherton Inn, causing eight casualties. The “casualties” were all local volunteers.
Shortly afterwards incendiary bombs would cause fires and more casualties at Park Terrace. And an unexploded bomb would fall on the railway bridge near Strathblane Station.
At 3pm the committee was to evacuate civilians from Edenkiln, as well as those around Yarrow House.
At 4.15pm another bomb and tear gas would cause four serious casualties at Sunnyside in Blanefield [already devastated by the real landmine that landed there in 1941].
Meanwhile the “enemy” were heading for Blanefield! Here is what was envisaged:
The operation finished at 5pm. You will be pleased to hear that Exercise Kessog was deemed to be a reasonable success! You can read the paperwork in Strathblane Library.
Our “Super Seniors” remember the Second World War
Today only a handful of people remain with family memories of life in our community during the Second World War. We have been lucky enough to speak to four of them and record some of their recollections here. In a fifth case, Sarah Mitchell, who lived at Revoan on the Old Mugdock Road, has written a charming memoir of her life in wartime Strathblane and we record some extracts.
Jim Brown (b1935)
“The Second World War began on my fourth birthday, 3 September 1939. My father was in the RAF reserve and was called up immediately. I would see little of him until he was demobbed in 1946. He was a leading aircraftman mechanic and spent two years in Burma.
“We lived at 3 Wood Place, overlooking Sunnyside and New City Row. Nobody expected anything to happen out here. On the night of the landmine incident in 1941, my mother had taken me down to Blackpool to see my father, who was stationed there. But we’d hardly arrived before we had to come back because of the damage caused by the landmine. The blast from the explosion created a crack in the wall of our home and blew out the door and windows. Sunnyside, the block down by the Blane Water, was a ruin. Neighbours helped us mend our house.
“Once I saw a German bomber coming over our house with a Spitfire chasing it. They made a terrific noise.
“I remember the blackout. The street lights had long covers over them and even the cars had fancy covers over their headlights. The ARP wardens came round checking that everyone had their windows properly covered. My grandfather was one of them. They used to parade up and down Campsie Dene Road. They had a lorry with a towbar that pulled a water pump
“We all had gas masks. Some of them had a Mickey Mouse face. We had a ration book. Everything was rationed. I got about 2oz of sweets a week. I’d go up to Annie Bone’s sweet shop. There wasn’t a great variety. Just boiled sweets, rock and stuff like that. Of course, there was no television then. Everyone had a radio and Davy McGregor at the garage had a charging unit to get them charged. I remember listening to Winston Churchill on our radio.
“My mother’s brother visited us in 1942. He said he was going away on a secret operation. Two weeks later he was dead. He was one of the glider pilots killed in the airborne operation aimed at taking out the heavy water plant at Telemark in occupied Norway.”
Sir Archibald Edmonstone (b 1934)
“My father [Charles Edmonstone] had been a Captain in the 9th Lancers in the First World War and commanded the Home Guard here in WW2.
“From 1943 onwards I was at a prep school in Devon but before that I was here. We had big black blinds over the windows. My nanny got a dressing down for lifting a blind to watch what was going on during the Clydebank Blitz. I watched from the lawn and remember seeing the explosions and searchlights lighting up the sky. Afterwards we had evacuees staying with us for several months .I remember the air raid sirens going off. We had to go into the tower. [Built c1434!]
“We had ration coupons just like everyone else and I’d go to Annie Bone’s in the hope of some sweets and a bar of chocolate. Fry’s Cream was my favourite. Still is!
“We used to have parades down at Blairquhosh [near Glengoyne Distillery]. That’s where the “tank trap” was, though I doubt if it would stop a tank. If the Germans invaded and came along the A81, the Home Guard would be called out. There was a trench beside the road topped with concrete blocks. The Home Guard would be in the trench with their guns and a heavy wire or chain put across the road to stop a vehicle coming along the road. The blocks are still there, though the trench was filled in.”
Marion Harvey (b 1946)
Marion is the youngest of our “Super Seniors” and, in fact, wasn’t born until just after the war. However, she has strong family links with an important aspect of Strathblane’s war as well as its aftermath.
“My parents were living in Clarkston with my paternal grandparents. My mother really wanted a home of her own. What she got was a Carbeth hut! It was carpenter-built and had some some lovely woodwork but neither electricity nor running water. Carbeth at that time was a very busy place because of the large number of refugees from the Clydebank blitz.”
To accommodate them the landowner, Patrick Barns-Graham, in agreement with the local authority in Clydebank, had allowed more huts to be built. By 1946 there were 285. During the war vegetables were grown behind the huts to boost the food supply. The children attended Craigton rather than Strathblane school because there was a convenient bus service in the morning, though they often had to walk the three miles home.
Marion spent the first two years of her life at Carbeth before her parents were able to secure one of the prefabs built at Dumbrock Crescent. There her family became very friendly with the Wood household, including Jack Wood, whose wife and children had been killed by the parachute landmine that fell on Blanefield in 1941. Jack often visited the Harveys: “He used to visit our house because he missed his children so much. I think my brother and I reminded him of them.”
Alastair Wallace (b 1943)
“There’s a man in Mum’s bed! Apparently, that’s what I told my sisters in 1946. Of course, the man was my father. He was in the Royal Engineers and didn’t get home until then. I’d been born in 1943 and had never seen him.
“Mum was very good at coping. We had a family from Clydebank staying with us. They lived in the attic. Along with our staff that meant about 12 mouths to feed every day. Jimmy Kirkpatrick was the gardener. Occasionally, he would guddle a big salmon from the Blane. Probably wasn’t supposed to.
“We all had gas masks. Horrible things. Very claustrophobic. We used to play with them after the war. If the siren went off, we all had to troop down into the stokehole.
“One thing I remember is that pillars had to be constructed to hold up the garden wall because of the weight of the ammunition trains passing on the railway that ran along the opposite side. [You can see these clearly in the background of the photograph above of young Alastair with Jimmy Kirkpatrick, taken in May 1944 at the Old Manse.]
“We’ve always grown a lot of our own produce and even more of the garden was given over to vegetables than now. Some was used to raise funds for the war effort or just given away.
“Going to Annie Bone’s for our sweets was always a highlight. She was very striking with her bright red lipstick. I liked the little tablets of ice cream you could get in a paper wrapper.
“My mother employed a lady called Miss Campbell (a former governess) and they ran a little private school together.”
Funnily enough, one of the pupils was…
Sarah Mitchell (b 1938)
Sarah Paton Wiseman (née Mitchell) was born in 1938 and during the Second World War lived with her parents at the villa called Revoan on Old Mugdock Road. By the end of the war she had two younger sisters. She has vivid memories of wartime Strathblane, which she shares in her delightful memoir Summer Knickers. (Available to borrow from Strathblane Library. Extracts can be found at https://www.strathblaneheritage.org/summer-knickers-a-scottish-wartime-childhood-by-sarah-paton-wiseman-edited-extracts-with-an-addendum-by-margie-mitchell
WAR COMES TO STRATHBLANE
On 30 September 1938 Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich waving the infamous non-aggression pact signed by Hitler, promising “Peace for our time”. My father, having lost an eye in the First World War aged 18, was not reassured.
It is unlikely that my mother foresaw that she would soon be teaching herself to cook with wartime rations, urging her rain-bedraggled hens to lay and storing their precious eggs in pails of waterglass to preserve them for winter. She would have been surprised to know that she would take up beekeeping to supplement the shortage of sugar and that, before long, the petrol which supported their comfortable lifestyle would become a rare commodity.
Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, just before my first birthday, dismissing the Munich agreement as “just a scrap of paper”. Although WWII deeply affected the lives of urban children in Britain, country parents attempted to shield their offspring from the reality of war. While our father and mother were facing the death of friends, bombing on the Clyde and the ever-present threat of invasion, we children enjoyed a magical childhood in comparative innocence.
Even so, from beyond moor and mountain and the safe walls of my childhood, murmurs of confusion escaped. A father was missing, the government-provided Mickey Mouse gas mask did not feel like a real toy. Germans, in my dreams, crawled through the garden at night wearing knitted blue Balaclava helmets like the boy I feared at nursery school.
MISSING
Margaret Turnbell is a grown-up. Her husband is missing. We hear the grown-ups talking about it and we hear them not talking about it. They pretend they were saying something else when we come into a room.
“How can a person be missing, Mummy?” “It happens in war.” “Is missing the same as lost?” “No.”
Master Bun the Baker’s Son is missing from our Happy Families pack. We play without him. Daddy says the Buns still count as a family.
“How is missing different from lost, Mummy?” “I’ll explain when you are older, dear.”
The Turnbell children are babies. They are strapped into prams and pushed up the Mugdock Road like we were. They are taken out of their prams and fed and put back in again. They are tucked into cots at night. When Mr Turnbell was here, he was like an ordinary daddy. He drank sherry and smoked a pipe and went out in the boat.
[Sarah has changed the family’s name here, either from discretion or amnesia. Though an Alexander Turnbull from Mugdock was missing and then confirmed dead in 1945, a more likely candidate is Dick Pedder, who had lived next door to the Mitchells, and was killed in 1941. An amalgam of the two perhaps? See https://www.strathblaneheritage.org/strathblane-7/ ]
THE MICKEY MOUSE GAS MASK
“Look! It’s fun! You put it over your face and pretend to be a mouse.” My aunt puts the Mickey Mouse mask over her face to show me. “Your turn,” says my aunt brightly. Inside the mask is a rubbery tunnel. It smells horrid. I jerk my head backwards. “I don’t want to.” They look at each other, perturbed.
THE SWEETIE RATION
My sister Vicky sits cross-legged on the cushions. She takes half a poke of sweeties out of her pocket and pops one in her mouth. She sucks it slowly. It’s Wednesday and she’s still got part of her sweetie ration left from Friday. Every week she chooses wisely and spins it out. I choose unwisely – Highland Toffee and Liquorice Allsorts – and eat them on the way back from the shop.
Strathblane School in Wartime
The start of the Second World War saw huge changes at the school. In September 1939 the school was closed for a time while hasty arrangements were made for the arrival of 89 evacuees and their teachers.
In her local history (A Century of Change, published in 2012), Alison Dryden tells us:
“In September l939, 89 evacuees arrived from Maryhill in Glasgow with four teachers, outnumbering the local pupils by one, and the school was closed for a few days to make the necessary arrangements. The Co-operative Hall [behind what is now Roots hairdressers] was used as additional accommodation.
After the initial ‘Phoney War’ scare, many of the evacuees began to return to Glasgow.
In April 1940 two of the teachers who had come with the evacuees terminated their duties at the school and returned to Maryhill. A note was kept of the number of evacuees during the war years. For some time the number was static around the mid twenties and it is likely that many of these evacuees were relatives of people living in the village. By the end of the war only two or three remained.” Alison also tells us that initially Ardunan House was used to accommodate evacuees.
Back Row: D Haggett, I McSporran, D McDonald, A Mortimer, J Allan, E Graham, W Linning;
Middle Row: unknown, unknown, B McSporran, W Pollack, M Mcgregor, R Pastridge, C Cummens, N Skene;
Third Row: unknown, unknown, B Findley, E Melrose, R Cochrane, B Graham, M Dickson, unknown, unknown, unknown;
Front Row: R Bone, R Brown, P McPherson, G Brodie.
Some of the unnamed pupils may be evacuees from Maryhill.
To date this is the only school photograph we have found from the Second World War. Jim Brown (b 1935) has fond memories of Miss Russell, who became his teacher a couple of years after it was taken: “She was a lovely lady with beautiful red hair. She was also very kind. I think she came from Lennoxtown.”
On 14 March 1941, the second night of the terrible Clydebank blitz, two landmines were dropped on the village. One exploded at the bottom of New City Row, killing two of the evacuee children, Isabella and John Wood, aged 11 and nine, and their mother. Ironically, the family had fled bombing in Govan and were staying with the children’s grandparents, who lived there.
The blast from the bomb smashed windows in the school, which was closed for several days while repairs were carried out. The logbook entry for the following Monday only mentions that repairs were necessary. No reference to Isabella and John! As new arrivals in the village, perhaps they had yet to register.!
With so many men away at war, in October 1944 pupils who were absent at the potato harvest were granted an exemption. Jim Brown said the pupils were paid two shillings a day.
On 9 May 1945, the day after Victory in Europe Day, the children marched behind a piper to a field at Wester Leddriegreen for a day of sports. In August 1945 the school closed to celebrate the Victory in Japan.
What the Papers Said
Throughout the war the Stirling Observer, Milngavie & Bearsden Herald and occasionally other newspapers carried items of Strathblane news that reflected how the locals were coping with life in wartime. Here is a small selection:
Washing Warning, 17 Apr 1941 Stirling Observer
Verse and Worse?
Their work may not win a Pulitzer Prize but war seems to bring out the poet in those keen to demonstrate their fervent patriotism. In May 1943 the Stirling Observer reported that the Coronation Quaich for an acrostic based on the word VICTORY had been won by Mrs McGregor, whose husband ran the garage and filling station in Blanefield. Here it is:
And this ditty from a Mr F Harkins of Milngavie reached the columns of the Milngavie & Bearsden Herald in September 1944. Local readers should note the opening of the third verse:
“As I gaze at old Tambowie/ And the hills around Strathblane,/ My thoughts are but a mixture/ Of joy and of pain.”
Victory Celebrations
How did Strathblane celebrate Victory in Europe Day on Tuesday 8 May 1945? The school was closed for the day and a thanksgiving service held at the parish church. Residents and businesses decorated their homes and premises with flags and bunting. The newly formed Strathendrick Pipe Band played and there was a dance in the Edmonstone Hall. The following day there were children’s sports at Wester Leddriegreen.
For many months locals had been fundraising for “Welcome Home” events and as service personnel were demobbed and prisoners of war returned home, a series of celebrations took place. School children got another day off in August to mark VJ (Victory in Japan) Day.
On 30 October 1946, the community organised a “Welcome Home Dinner & Dance” at the Edmonstone Hall for ex-service men and women to welcome them back “to civilian life after their heroic and splendid efforts in the Victory”. A presentation was made to each of the veterans.
On 29 January 1947 the Parish Church held another such dinner at which “Victory Trifle” was served and the meeting was addressed by parish minister, Rev Frederick Kennedy, who had been a padre during the war.
The Blairskaith Bomber
By May 1941 the German raids on Clydeside’s shipyards and engineering works had shifted to the towns of Greenock and Port Glasgow. Better defences had been put in place including the use of night fighters and the erection of ‘Starfish’ decoy towns: structures containing tanks of petrol which could be set alight to resemble burning cities, intended to divert the German bombers away from their targets.
On the night of May 7 one particular raid, of Junkers 88 bombers from the Luftwaffe base at Schiphol in Holland, was intercepted by Boulton Paul Defiant night fighters scrambled from the RAF base at Prestwick. One Defiant crew scored a direct hit on a Ju.88 which burst into flames and started to spiral downwards.
Strathblane amateur war historian Alisdair Fleming has spent years researching what happened to this particular machine, whose fate had been witnessed by his father who was then serving with the police in Maryhill, Glasgow. Mr Fleming found the crash site, on bleak Blairskaith Muir near Lennoxtown, and has pieced together the remarkable story, which he presented to a capacity audience at Strathblane Heritage in 2023.
The plane’s four-man crew parachuted out before the crash. Radio-operator Overfeldwebel Ernst Laganki and air-gunner Feldwebel Willi Muller landed on Balmore Golf Course, suffering broken legs in the process. They were arrested by the local Home Guard to become prisoners-of-war.
But commander and observer, Hauptmann Gerd Hansmann, and pilot Oberleutnant Werner Coenen, were last out and died as their parachutes were unable to open fully. They were buried in Lennoxtown’s Campsie graveyard and – although Werner Coenen was later exhumed to be reburied in the German military graveyard at Cannock Chase, Staffordshire – Gerd Hansmann remains in his Campsie lair, a decision taken by his widow, Gisela.
Alisdair Fleming’s research has uncovered a remarkable story. Gisela visited her late husband’s grave after the war and saw that local people had placed flowers by his headstone, possibly because of a local story that the plane’s crew had stayed at the controls to try and ensure that it avoided crashing on the village. She was deeply moved, particularly when she was invited to join villagers in their homes as they witnessed her devotion to her lost husband. And although Gisela later re-married, she continued to visit Gerd Hansmann’s grave until her own death in the 1990s. Such are the human reactions to the horrors of war.
