by Alan Taylor
‘We gi’ed them hauf an hoor’s start this time, and aff we went. Hauf an hoor. Jings, man, we thought we had them this time, though the wait near kilt us wi’ hunger and the cauld. But . . . ach . . . we hudni’ gone more nor a mile affore I looks back; and there, jookin’ in ahint the last corner, was Wee Jock, in his kilt. Man, it was chronic.’
From nine until noon the running fight continued, first one side gaining the rear, then the other, for the Loch Lomond road is thickly wooded, with cover for an ambushing army. They hid in drains and ditches; they lolled by the lochside in the hope that the others should pass. But when both parties met behind the same hedge, each thinking the other was in the rear, a peace conference was obviously called for. In three hours they had covered only two miles.
They tossed for first lift. Ginger and Choocter won. All four walked on together for an hour until the first car responded to signals, and Wullie and Wee Jock were left in sole possession of the road. It was a good lift, and took Choocter and Ginger over Glen Falloch and beyond to Crianlarich and Tyndrum, where their driver branched off for Oban. They set out to walk the rest.
I should like to be able to record that five minutes later Wullie and Wee Jock drove by in a Rolls Royce and were taken all the way to Glencoe; but well-turned plots happen seldom in real life. The truth of the matter was that the two stragglers were landed at the Tyndrum branch a few minutes later, and all four plodded on again together. After five miles (an unprecedented distance for a hitch-hiker to walk, according to Choocter) an aged but empty car stopped beside them, and its driver waved towards him. He was an apologetic creature.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ he began, ‘but I’m going to Glencoe and want to find a certain hotel there. Kingshouse Inn, it’s called. I . . . I wonder if you could tell me where it is?’
Choocter looked at the car. At a pinch it would carry them all. He smiled his most charming smile.
‘It’s a kinda difficult road to describe,’ he began, ‘but it wouldn’t be takin’ me and ma pals far oot o’ oor way to show ye. We weren’t really thinkin’ o’ goin’ to Glencoe, ye ken, but . . .’
SWASTIKAS IN SAUCHIEHALL STREET, NOVEMBER 1939
The Jewish Echo
The Jewish Echo was one of several Jewish newspapers in Glasgow. Started in 1928, it closed in 1992. The Mitchell Library holds a complete collection. This short item shows that anti-semitism had its followers everywhere.
Malicious damage was done to a number of Jewish shops in Glasgow and extensive anti-Jewish propaganda appeared in Jewish-owned property during the black-out at the weekend. About twenty windows or glass panels were cracked and swastikas were scratched with a diamond or metal tool on nearly eighty others.
The discovery of the majority of these destructive acts was made on Monday morning and the police were engaged in pursuing enquiries throughout the day.
Most of the shops affected are situated in Sauchiehall Street, though shops in Argyle Street and Stockwell Street were also damaged. Women’s dress shops, furriers and tailors suffered most.
A few of the windows had the words, ‘We don’t want Jews’, printed on the glass, but not all shops affected are Jewish-owned.
A MONGREL AMONG THE DUSTBINS, 1940
Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh (1903–66) is perhaps best known for his novel Brideshead Revisited (1945). Among his ancestors was Lord Cockburn, who was his great-great-grandfather. His masterpiece is the trilogy, Sword of Honour (1965), from which the following extract is taken, and which drew on his own wartime experiences.
Glasgow in November 1940 was not literally a ville lumière. Fog and crowds gave the black-out a peculiar density. Trimmer, on the afternoon of his arrival, went straight from the train to the station hotel. Here too were fog and crowds. All its lofty halls and corridors were heaped with luggage and thronged by transitory soldiers and sailors. There was a thick, shifting mob at the reception office. To everybody the girl at the counter replied: ‘Reserved rooms only. If you come back after eight there might be some cancellations.’
Trimmer struggled to the front, leered and asked: ‘Have ye no a wee room for a Scottish laddie?’
‘Come back after eight. There may be a cancellation.’
Trimmer gave her a wink and she seemed just perceptibly responsive, but the thrust of other desperate and homeless men made further flirtation impossible.
With his bonnet on the side of his head, his shepherd’s crook in his hand and a pair of major’s crowns on his shoulders (he had changed them for his lieutenant’s stars in the train’s lavatory), Trimmer began to saunter through the ground floor. There were men everywhere. Of the few women each was the centre of a noisy little circle of festivity, or else huddled with her man in a gloom of leave-taking. Waiters were few. Everywhere he saw heads turned and faces of anxious entreaty. Here and there a more hopeful party banged the table and impolitely shouted: ‘We want service.’
But Trimmer was undismayed. He found it all very jolly after his billet on Mugg and experience had taught him that anyone who really wants a woman, finds one in the end.
He passed on with all the panache of a mongrel among the dustbins, tail waving, ears cocked, nose a-quiver. Here and there in his passage he attempted to insinuate himself into one or other of the heartier groups but without success. At length he came to some steps and the notice: CHATEAU de MADRID. Restaurant de grand luxe.
Trimmer had been to this hotel once or twice before but he had never penetrated into what he knew was the expensive quarter. He took his fun where he found it, preferably in crowded places. Tonight would be different. He strolled down the rubber-lined carpet and was at once greeted at the foot of the stairs by a head waiter.
‘Bon soir, monsieur. Monsieur has engaged his table?’
‘I was looking for a friend.’
‘How large will monsieur’s party be?’
‘Two, if there is a party, I’ll just sit here and have a drink.’
‘Pardon, monsieur. It is not allowed to serve drinks here except to those who are dining upstairs.’
The two men looked at one another, fraud to fraud. They had both knocked about a little. Neither was taken in by the other. For a moment Trimmer was tempted to say: ‘Come off it. Where did you get that French accent? The Mile End Road or the Gorbals?’
The waiter was tempted to say: ‘This isn’t your sort of place, chum. Hop it.’
In the event Trimmer said: ‘I shall certainly dine here if my friend turns up. You might give me a look at the menu while I have my cocktail.’
And the head waiter said: ‘Tout de suite, monsieur.’
MOB RULE, JUNE 1940
Joe Pieri
The Second World War was a defining event for Italo-Scots. The heightening of pre-existing tensions and prejudices following the declaration of war with Italy in 1940 led to anti-Italian riots across Scotland and in particular in Edinburgh and Glasgow, which had the largest Italian communities. The first Italians to reach Glasgow arrived at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, often from Barga in northern Tuscany and Picinisco in Lazio. Most of the immigrants sold fish and chips and ice-cream and were prominent in the restaurant trade, as many still are. It was Winston Churchill who commanded that all Italian males should be apprehended and interned, prior to being deported to Canada aboard the Arandora Star, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat shortly after it set off. Of the 446 who were drowned, twenty-nine came from Glasgow.
A muted roar made itself heard from the street below, rising to a crescendo of shouting voices directly under my window. I went over and peered out through the curtains. A crowd of about a hundred shouting and gesticulating people, pushing in front of them a handcart loaded with stones and bricks, were gathering in front of the shop. ‘There’s a Tally place . . . do it in!’, came the shout; then to the accompaniment of yells and cheers, a barrage of missiles came flying through the air, smashing the glass frontage of the shop. A doze
n or so of the mob, armed with sticks and batons, cleared away the jagged edges of the broken windows and jumped through the shop beyond. Through a curiously detached and dreamlike mental haze I could hear the sound of smashing and curses from below, and peering fearfully through the lace curtains, I watched as the contents of the looted shop were distributed to the milling crowd. That night there were few, if any, Italian shops left untouched by the gangs of hooligans, and although no physical harm was done to anyone, years of hard work was destroyed by unrestrained bands of louts who roamed the streets of Glasgow wrecking and looting in the name of patriotism. As far as I know, not a finger was lifted by the police in an attempt to stop the looting of Italian shops in Glasgow that night.
THE CLYDEBANK BLITZ, 13 MARCH 1941
The Glasgow Herald
The shipbuilding town of Clydebank, near Glasgow, was devastated by two Luftwaffe raids. Hundreds of people died and thousands of houses were destroyed. Production of ships and munitions for the Allies made the town a target. Though one of the aims of the raids had been to reduce morale and prompt calls for an end to the war, it had quite the opposite effect and there were many reports of people reacting heroically, stoically and humourfully in the aftermath of what has been described as ‘the most cataclysmic event’ in war-time Scotland.
After being entombed in the wreckage of a bombed tenement in the Glasgow area since last Thursday night, two men, one of them a War Reserve Policeman, were rescued alive yesterday.
The policeman, weakened by his severe ordeal, died in the early evening, some five hours after he had been released from the mass of debris. The other man, discovered in the course of the evening – almost eight hours after the raid – now lies in the Glasgow Western Infirmary in a serious condition.
Hopes were raised last night that a girl might be found alive, and rescuers were working with all speed to trace her. At a late hour, however, their efforts had been unrewarded.
The two men concerned in the remarkable rescues, whose endurance aroused the admiration of the rescue workers, were Frederick Clark (32), War Reserve Policeman, and John Cormack (22).
Cormack was found lying in a bed, where he was resting when the tenement was bombed. A big beam lay across him, and only his face and arms were visible. His arms were folded across his breast.
The rescue workers who discovered him were astonished when he feebly waved his hand to them through the debris. Quickly they cleared the way to him.
‘Could you go a cup of tea?’ Dr Mackay, who had been summoned to the scene, asked Cormack while he was still a prisoner in the wreckage. ‘Aye, Ah fine could,’ was the reply.
‘I gave him a cup of tea and some brandy, and put a cigarette in his mouth,’ said the doctor. Cormack was quite warm. Apparently, he had been in bed when the tenement collapsed, and this saved him from dying of cold.
‘He was able to help us get him out, and explained how a beam was protecting him. He also told us there was a young girl, somewhere near, and that she had spoken to him about a day before.’
Describing the discovery of Cormack, Jack Couglin, a Dublin-born man, who was one of the rescue squad, said – ‘I had a hunch that there was somebody else still alive in the wreckage in the same corner where we had found the other man earlier in the day. I went on working at that spot, and there, when I lifted up some boards, I saw a man lying below. He looked like a statue, lying on the bed with his arms folded. But in a moment I found he was alive. We called other rescue workers to the spot, and very soon managed to release the man.’
Mr D. Barr, who had been bombed from his home in the same street, and was on his way to salvage some of his belongings, was passing when he heard someone shout, ‘A man alive! Get a doctor and an ambulance quickly!’
Mr Barr ran at once to the surgery of Dr Mackay near-by. The doctor went at once to the bombed tenement and stood by in shirt sleeves as the workers extricated Cormack. As soon as he could reach him he went to his aid.
When Clark was rescued he was still able to speak. As he was removed on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance, he told his rescuers – ‘I’m all right.’ Before he was taken to the Western Infirmary Clark was able to drink a cup of tea and eat a biscuit.
Demolition and rescue workers who have been working side by side since last week’s blitz, and with decreasing hope of removing trapped victims alive, were astonished yesterday afternoon to hear a moan come from the debris. They had just removed a body when they were startled by the sound.
With the utmost speed they excavated a tunnel through the mess of the twisted wreckage as a woman hastened to the scene from a near-by clinic.
Dr Annie Thomson, of an Outdoor Medical Services Clinic, was the first person to reach the imprisoned man. She crawled through the improvised tunnel, no more than 18 inches wide, and administered an injection. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked the man, still pinned beneath the debris. She was surprised when she found that he was able to reply. ‘No,’ he said.
As the rescuers worked feverishly and grimly to release him, jacking up wreckage to free his feet, they discovered that a chest of drawers had apparently fallen over Clark’s body, thus protecting him from the mass of stone and timber that had crashed above him. He was lying at full length on top of a fallen door in a passage-way many feet below street level.
The successful and unexpected rescue effort was described by Mr Norman Manson, a joiner, who was in charge of the rescue squad. ‘We had,’ he said, ‘to smash in a floor and crawl underneath to locate the trapped constable. I estimate that we had to remove seven tons of wreckage before we were able to break a way through to him.’
The rescue operations were in two distinct stages. When the tunnel was driven through to reach Clark it was discovered that he could not be freed until a weight of stone pinning a leg beneath a chest of drawers had been removed.
It was seen that to remove this stone would cause a downfall of more wreckage, and it was decided to dig another passage in the foundation ground of the building below where Clark was lying. While this was being done, warm blankets and hot-water bottles were placed around Clark, who was also given stimulants.
As the under-tunnelling proceeded, Clark’s leg dropped clear, while the chest of drawers holding up the wreckage above remained in position, and eventually, after three hours’ work, the rescuers were able to free the imprisoned man.
Colleagues at the police headquarters where Clark was stationed said that he was actually on night shift last week, but had left the station for his night off when the raid occurred. He was lodging with a Mr and Mrs Docherty, who, with their two daughters, are believed to be still trapped in the partially wrecked building.
AN OLD-STYLE AMPUTATION, c. 1944
R.D. Laing
Born in Glasgow in 1927, R.D. Laing’s background was working-class. His father was apprenticed at fourteen in a shipyard and after World War One found employment with the Corporation of Glasgow as an electrical engineer. Laing himself graduated in medicine from Glasgow University in 1951 and went on to practise psychiatry. His principal and controversial thesis, expounded in The Divided Self (1960) and other books, was that psychiatrists should not attempt to cure or ameliorate the symptoms of mental illness – a term he repudiated – but rather should encourage patients to view themselves as going through an enriching process. In Wisdom, Madness & Folly (1985), his autobiography, he wrote: ‘As a young psychiatrist in general hospitals and psychiatric hospitals, I administered locked wards and ordered drugs, injections, padded cells and straitjackets, electric shocks, deep insulin comas and the rest. I was uneasy about lobotomies but not sure why. Usually all this treatment was against the will of its recipients.’ Laing died in 1989.
The first surgical operation I attended, at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, was very atypical of the surgery in this day and age. It was a mid-thigh amputation on an old, seasoned and pickled sea-salt who was beginning to develop gangrene due to advanced arteriosclerosis. His heart and lungs were not in
good shape. It was thought he would not stand a chance with a general anaesthetic, so it was decided to try out a procedure that had been reported from Australia: ice-pack anaesthesia. The surgeon ordered his left leg, which was the one due to be amputated, to be packed in ice the night before and for him to be given a bottle of whisky before the night staff went off. The operation was to be performed first thing in the morning.
At the first cut of the knife he went wild, screaming, yelling and cursing. It was evident that the ice-pack had not had its desired effect and, it turned out, the nurse on night-duty who had given him a bottle of whisky had no idea what a bottle of whisky meant in the real world and had given him the contents of a four-ounce hospital bottle, which he had downed in one gulp. It did not touch him at all.
Anyway, it was too late to turn back. He had to be held down and I saw an old-style amputation. The whole thing.
However shocking such things are, I could ‘take’ them. Life has to go on. Every gamble does not come off. It is no one’s fault really. The next patient is already on the table. There is no time to cry over spilt blood . . .
At the end of our first year as medical students, we paid a traditional visit to the Royal Gartnavel Mental Hospital, Glasgow.
This was the first time I had been in a mental hospital. Over a hundred students assembled in the main hall and the Superintendent, Dr Angus MacNiven, from a stage platform, gave a short talk about the hospital and psychiatry and introduced and talked with four or five patients. These were the first psychiatric patients I had ever set eyes upon.
I came in late. There were two men on the stage sitting on chairs having a chat. One of them, in impeccable dress, with a cheerful flower in his buttonhole, sat with composure and assurance, talked fluently with the other man, who had his legs twisted around each other, grimaced, stammered, fidgeted, all but picked his nose, and wriggled around in his chair.
It was not until the interview ended, when the patient got up, gave a bow and left the stage that I realised that Dr MacNiven was the man I had taken to be the patient. Years later, after medical school, six months in a neurosurgical unit and two years as a psychiatrist in the British Army, he was very amused when, now a registrar on his staff, I told him the story.
