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| The Clydeside Blitzes |
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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...
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