 |  | | | The Clydeside Blitzes | There are 3 messages in this section. |
Bob Garven from Perth. Posted 22 Feb 2006.
We lived at 976 Govan Rd at the time, on the top flat, and for the 2 nights of the Clydebank blitz all the neighbours decided by common consent to congregate in the lobby of Mr & Mrs Jeffreys who lived in the middle house on the first floor. This was reckoned to be the safest place despite the fact the authorities had provided a purpose built air raid shelter in the back court and a single brick blast wall on the pavement at the entrance to the close, which everyone had decided would be useless as it was reckoned it could be pushed over by one hand.
I have clear memories of that crowded lobby and the noise, mainly of the guns firing from ships berthed on the Clyde, in their futile attempts to drive off the raiders. Our family of 4, my father worked night shift in Fairfield's engine shop was not there but my Grandmother was. She was elderly and quite deaf and I can see her sitting there with a serene but bemuse expression obviously blissfully unaware of why we were there.
Our near area escaped any major damage but a few days later Gran, on her own, took a tram trip to Clydebank. She came back aghast at the devastation horrified at the damage and wondering why on earth were people being encouraged to wear tin helmets. What use were they if bombs could do so much damage to buildings?
Later during the blitz on Greenock we shifted our place of refuge to the cellar below a Newsagents belonging to Helen MacPherson, the daughter of one of our neighbours, who had shared the lobby with us. Whether this was any safer or not I dont know but since through the cellar wall was the cellar of the public house above the risk of fire might have been higher or perhaps our period of entombment more pleasant. Who knows? I remember at one time poking my head out and seeing the tremendous blaze at the SCWS factory at Shieldhall which had been struck... | | |
|  | William Ba from Ajax, Ontario. Posted 6 Mar 2006.
i remember very well the first bomb dropped in Yoker. My brother was out delivering groceries on the shopping bike. That was the begining of strange days and nights - going for a bus and tram ride to Airdrie, then being evacuated to. what is now, the Scottish international airport.
My father was an air raid warden putting out fires from incendiary bombs.
As well as being in the volunteer fire department my oldest brother volunteered to go through the bodies recovered after the bombing of Clydebank. I believe all this made folks a lot closer as family and friends...
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| | margaret w sligar from richmond in usa. Posted 16 Oct 2006.
during the blitz i lived in yoker. the first bomb dropped was on a tenement building on langholm street. my name then was Elliott. The blitz then started in earnest.We were all in the lobby of our house when a plane with its unexploded bombs was shot down and landed on an air raid shelter at Yarrows shipyard. The workers were in the shelter our building swayed at the impact i thought it was going to collapse.A terrible two nights followed with bombs dropping all along the river Clyde trying to wipe out the Clydeside and and all the shipyards. They did not accomplish their mission.
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