Don`t tell me there is an air raid?.

Destroyer on convoy duty

1940`s fashion

German U Boat

Anderson Shelter

Spitfire

Ladies Wedge Soles

War time Tate and Lyle Products

War time Turban

Young Leithers Memories and Experiences of the War

and the Austere Period after it

Baby Gas Suit

Usual Queue.

Tattie Howking

Nae Bananies

Dig for Victory

Adult Gas Mask

Lancaster Bomber

Ration Book

Air Raid Warden

My own memories in brief are;

A month after enrolling at Dr Bells in August 1939, we were all

scattered to various halls in Leith while air raid shelters were being built in the playgrounds.

A long night in an air raid shelter below the tenement in Sheriff Brae during the Clydebanks bombing raid.

Another time watching an air fight overhead during the daylight raid on Forth Bridge and Rosyth dockyard.

Taking part as a volunteer gas victim in decontamination exercises in Leith Hospital every Thursday evening for a year.

Helping to collect scrap metal from households as a war effort.

Finally before the war ended with our bonfires, making friends with both British and Polish soldiers based in the Eldorado and the old Hawthorn yard. Then watching them gather in the surrounding streets before being marched off prior to D-Day.

John Stewart

My earliest recollection of the war was pedaling my tricycle somewhere around the Starbank Park area and watching a dogfight between the RAF and Luftwaffe. It was a beautiful sunny day with a brilliant blue sky.

Shortly thereafter I was evacuated to Tillicoultry in Clackmannan. I have no recollection of how long I was separated from my family, however I returned to Leith in time to enroll at Bonnington School in 1940.

For a perspective on how it was in Leith during World War 2 all Leithers should read " THIS PRESENT EMERGENCY- Edinburgh. the River Forth and South-East Scotland and the Second World War" by Andrew Jeffrey. Published 1992 by Mainstream Publishing Company, 7 Albany Street, Edinburgh EH1 3UG

Tom Wallace

Remember when we all had to have identity cards. I have 2 of them. Surprisingly one is stamped after the war was over.

When I came to Canada in 1958 my mother gave me mine as she thought I would need them coming to a strange country and well "you never know when you will be asked to produce it" I have held on to them all these years.

Maureen Logue

When war was declared I was almost 9 years old and my younger brother Raymond would be 6 years old. One day we were marched from St Mary's School to the Leith Central Station. On the way through the streets I remember people handing out pennies to us. We had just become wartime evacuees. Boarding a train we soon fell asleep waking up in the dark to find we were in Aberdeen.

We were taken to a local school and spent the night sleeping on the floor. Next morning my brother and I were given carrier bags with foodstuffs then taken by car to a house in Rathven Village just outside Buckie and left there, both of us crying our eyes out not knowing what was going on .

We stayed with the Watt's who worked on the local farm . The house was lit by oil lamps, Cooking was on the coal fire. There was no running water We walked a hundred yards or so up the road with buckets to fill them with our daily water needs from a pump. The toilet was a dry toilet in an outhouse at the back. We walked to school through the neep fields to Portessie.

Breakfast in the morning was meal in a cup mixed with salt and cold water. We did have some fun on the farm milking the cows , riding horses helping in the fields but after 6 months and a visit from Dad who came up to see us on leave from the Army he decided to take us home.  James Meikle

The first thing I remember about the war was being on the #5 bus and passing LanniesCafe as a large crowd were smashing in the windowsI remember the many nights we spent in our Anderson Shelter listening to the anti aircraft guns from Craigentinny Golf Course ,as we lived so close. The noise was so loud some times we were never sure if a bomb and landed or not .In fact one did in Logan Lea and my friend Johnny Dillons cousin was killed. Who remembers the big water reservoirs filled with water in case of incendary fires.

I remember watching the dog fight right above our heads they were so close you could see the pilots faces and my mother screaming and rushing us to the shelter.We were never evacuated, although my sister Rae and I ,plus all my cousins were scheduled to be evacuated to my Grans brother in Vancouver. The ship we were supposed to travel on was sunk so the family decided it was safer to stay, so it took me another 17 years to finally get to Canada

Jim Gibson

I remember the night that Leith town hall was damaged by a bomb dropped by a plane returning to Germany decided to try to get Leith Docks.We had gone to Dr Bells school baths area where many families from 129 and 139 Great Junction St "sheltered" thanks to the Janitor Mr Borthwick.Now I realise the baths were right above Crabbies Whisky vaults!!!

We sat in the first floor flat where an invalid Mrs Richardson lived and was unable to leave her house. When her husband who had been on duty with the Home Guard came home some time after we had heard a huge explosion.His front was covered in mud.His back was covered in white powder and he told us what had occured. His unit had seen the lone plane flying towards the Forth and observed a parachute dropping from it.The officer in charge assuming it was a spy trying to land ordered "fix Bayonets" and the men tried to encicle and close in on where the parachutist would land.

Suddenly someone realised it was not a parachutist but a landmine and the next command was run for it. They dropped their rifles and scattered. The blast blew them on their faces and their backs were covered in Flour from the flour mill that had been destroyed. None of these men had been injured apart from sore eardrums. But I think one person was killed that evening. I was taken back to Coldstream where I had been evacuated at the start of the war but had drifted back home when no bombing had occurred until then

:Tom Curran

:Newhaven WW2 The bomb shelters is one thing that sticks out in my mind. When the siren's started, it was a mad rush for the adults to gather up the bairns, and get them to the shelter.

And when we children got there, and kind of settled down, some of the women would start singing some of the old songs, and it was a good feeling to think we were safe.

But one night the German planes came over and dropped their bombs,one of which landed on a tenement on Fort St, which would be about 500 yds.away. This ended the singing.

The ground shook violently, and looking at the women you could see their faces change to fear. Some were crying and some were praying, and being a young child it was hard to understand. Anyway the following morning it was off to school, just like a normal day.

But for the adults it was thinking of the poor souls on Fort St, and wondering if there was anything the neighbors could do to help them. There are all kinds of stories that could be told by anyone who was old enough to remember those days during the war

Jimmy Tennant

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