Kings, Castles & “Durty” Wee Rascals
Australian Jim Stoddart was born in a Glasgow Tenement and raised in a Glasgow Housing Scheme 1943-1965. Jim will be taking readers on a trip down memory lane, of a time and place that will never be the same again, and hopes even if only a few people in the Scot’s Diaspora have a dormant folk memory awakened, then he shall be more than delighted.
Victory in Europe
The 80th anniversary of V.E. Day was celebrated joyously in Britain in May with many ceremonies to mark the occasion. My wife, Jean, and I have known and appreciated since childhood how significant was the contribution to that victory from Commonwealth countries such as Australia Canada and New Zealand – and of course our cousins from the U.S.A. Victory in the Pacific was still to come but watching the celebrations on Sky UK and the BBC brought memories back for us and prompted us to reflect upon the sacrifice of our parents’ generation to bring Victory to Europe .
Born in 1943, Jean and I were ‘war babies’ and oblivious to the intense bombing surrounding our tenement homes lying close to the River Clyde in Glasgow. Its shipyards, its docks, its steelworks and heavy engineering workshops were significant targets of the Luftwaffe during World War II. About 1,500 civilians died at Clydebank, the location of John Brown’s Shipyard, on one dreadful night.
Air Raid Warden
My father tried to enlist in the Royal Air Force as a gunner for the turret guns of a Lancaster bomber but was refused. He was a riveter in the Harland & Wolf shipyard, in a reserve occupation. He was needed like others in the shipyards throughout Britain who were constantly building and repairing ships to compensate for the tonnage of those being sunk running the gauntlet across the Atlantic to feed and arm Britain. So after his shift at the Shipyard he became a member of Glasgow’s Civil Defence as an Air Raid Warden. That was dangerous enough. On one particular night he nearly died when on patrol accompanied by a police officer. A landmine (a parachute bomb) was dropped at the end of our street. We lived next to the Princes Dock. These were massive bombs intended to land more gently than a conventional bomb so as to cause maximum lateral damage to buildings. They literally sucked the air out of people’s lungs leaving them dead but their bodies almost intact.
My dad and the police constable were lucky because they had both run toward the parachute believing it was a German pilot bailing out from a bomber shot down by the city’s ack-ack guns. A soldier behind a baffle wall shouted for them to stop – screaming “It’s a bomb!” They were all blown back up the street with only minor injuries. My older brother and sister lost school friends that night, their school friends’ broken bodies placed in a makeshift mortuary in the co-operative dairy lying on the other side of our street. My wife’s dad, Cecil (Charlie) Smith was a boy soldier in India before partition of the sub-continent into India and Pakistan. Stationed at Rawalpindi in the 73rd Field Battery, of Northern Command, he is seen in photographs decked in dress tropical uniform, breeches, riding boots, spurs and pith helmet. He’s beside the horse-drawn guns of the Royal artillery and in other multiple photographs of champion teams with shields representing football, hockey and mounted sports. He left the army circa 1938 to start an apprenticeship as an electrician. That didn’t last. It was now 1939 and he is called back in to service with the ill-fated British Expeditionary Force (BEF) into France with the 306 Battery of the 77th Highland Field Regiment. Then comes escape and rescue from Dunkirk as part of the walking wounded on the last hospital ship to leave the beaches. He is later fighting in the North African, and Italian campaigns, then on to Greece and Albania.
National heroes
The famous 51st Highland Division was tasked to be the rear guard to allow the rest of the BEF to escape the Beaches of Dunkirk. The 51st were literally sacrificed for the common good. All of them were killed, wounded or taken prisoner. Jean’s favourite uncle, Frank Simpson, was part of the ‘new’ 51st division with a lot to live up to. Frank was deployed to North Africa against Rommel’s Africa Corps and fought in the Battle of El Alamein. There was a high cost in dead and wounded for the many national heroes of the eighth army as quoted by Winston Churchill. He was part of the victory parade at Tripoli with Winston Churchill taking the salute. Later we find Frank at Messina because it was decided the best way in to Germany was through Sicily and Italy. Frank in his story- telling after the war said that the Scots got on particularly well with the Australian troops. I guess they had a very similar egalitarian attitude toward superior officers. Although the Australians found it hard to believe that any Scotsman like Frank could be teetotal.
Frank Simpson made his own little impact on military history as recorded in a book The Story of an Artillery Regiment of the 51st Highland Division by BSM Sam Wallace M. M. On the third of September 1943 at Messina 308 Battery, part of the 51st Highland Division was completing the last of a barrage of 29 rounds of rapid fire with ‘super charge’. We can imagine how hot the guns had become when the order was given to CEASE FIRE. Wallace in his book says: Actually Sergeant Frank Simpson fired off the last shell from the gun after cease fire which saved the gun. He was later told that he had disobeyed orders…Five guns were disabled and lost that day because the shells left in the guns on CEASE FIRE were stuck there because the heated barrels contracted on cooling. There was a final outcome from this catastrophe because the artillery training manual was amended to read CEASE FIRE – EMPTY GUNS.
Nevertheless according to his son, Campbell Simpson, he was demoted to corporal at the time for using common sense and a knowledge of schoolboy science to save his 25 pound howitzer. His demotion was not recorded in the official history. His son, Campbell, believed he got promoted back to sergeant when his team were back in preparation for Operation Overlord, the D-day landings. Frank landed on Sword Beach near Ouistreham in Normandy and eventually fought through Belgium and Holland as the Germans breached the dams in their retreat back to Germany. By Christmas 1944 Frank was in the Ardennes at the Battle of the Bulge. He said that because of the cold and before they could fire their shells they had to heat the cordite in them over a fire. The 51st Highland division crossed the Rhine on the 23rd March 1944. The German army were in full retreat as the allies advanced. Frank ended his service doing policing and guarding duties in occupied Germany.
The dawn of peace
My older sister was Dux of her primary school and had the honour of becoming the Queen of the Old Govan Fair in 1945. This was a traditional celebration with roots going back to early medieval times. It was a massive pageant attended by many thousands of Glasgow’s citizens. They lined the streets of Govan, Plantation and Ibrox to watch the colourful floats and tableaux, the pipe and brass bands and the marchers from all sorts of organisations. Money raised on the day went to the local hospital. Speeches at the coronation from honoured guests included:-
“Ladies and Gentlemen, it was on the third of September 1939 that hostilities broke out with all the attendant horror that we witnessed and suffered…We are able once again to hold the Old Govan Fair celebrations with all their glories and traditions. Wartime restrictions have brought us difficulties, not previously encountered, but this is our brave attempt to depict the Govan Fair as it was in the pre-war days. I now call upon Mrs Neilson of the Elder Cottage Hospital to crown Miss Jane Stoddart, pupil of Lorne Street Public School Queen of the Fair for 1945.
I am pleased and honoured…on behalf of the people of Govan, to perform the ceremony of crowning you, Miss Jane Stoddart, as Queen for the ensuing year. Together with your loyal subjects I wish your majesty every felicity during your reign… Your majesty begins her reign at an auspicious and happy time, at the dawn of peace after a long and trying war in which you subjects have given valued and effective service in the field, and in the shipyards and factories of Govan. The local people have every reason to be proud of their magnificent contribution to bringing about peace.”
My sister was then off to the hospital with her four maids to wish the patients well on their road to recovery. The reporter from the Govan Press found it difficult to estimate the massive number of people attending the historic procession and crowning but it seemed to him that the whole of the 100,000 population of Govan had turned out together with crowds of servicemen returned from the front. He describes gum–chewing American GI’s, Canadian tank men, Aussie diggers and Chinese seamen all enjoying and joining in with the fun and festivities. The post-war return of the Old Govan Fair was one of many small steps toward normality and hope for this stoic generation who deserve to be remembered for winning Victory in Europe for all of us.