Rudolf Hess

My family moved from southern England to Bearsden, north of Glasgow, in 1938 (when I was five years old) and stayed there for most of World War II, until moving to Morningside, Edinburgh, in 1943.
During our time near Glasgow we had many broken nights with the German bombing of the Clydebank shipyards and docks. Any remaining bombs were dumped nearby on the way back to Germany - a landmine fell on our school playing fields. We had regular gas mask practices at school. There were barrage balloons and anti-aircraft positions nearby; and in the mornings we used to pick up the shrapnel.
My father joined the LDV (later to become the Home Guard) and my mother was a Red Cross volunteer.
When Rudolf Hess made his unusual flight to Scotland on the 13th May 1941, he crashed his plane on a large country estate (belonging to a Duke, I believe), and was apprehended by a farm-worker there. The local Home Guard (including my father) was called out to guard Hess until the regular Army unit could arrive to arrest him - shades of “Dad’s Army”!
The son of a lady who lived near to us in Bearsden, Archie McKellar, served as a pilot in the RAF and was posthumously awarded the DFC.

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