Per Ardua Ad Astra

“PER ARDUA AD ASTRA”

When I left school at 16 in July 1939, my father had been dead for five months and Mum decided that we’d go back home to Dundee.
We found jobs and an uncle helped us get a flat. As a trainee furniture salesman my weekly wage was 12/6 (62½p), my sister, a nurse, earned £2 a month and with two office-cleaning jobs my mother contributed at least as much as we did.
Our rent and rates came to 17/- (85p) per week so it was a constant struggle and Mum’s savings dwindled, and although a change of job — to charging accumulators in a radio shop — increased my wage to £1 it didn’t really improve the situation much.
Our problems weighed so heavily that war seemed distant and almost irrelevant.
The War Comes to Us
However, one night as I was helping to paint our scout hut, there was an enemy hit-and-run raid and a bomb exploded close enough to rattle the hut and its inmates. The distant Battle of Britain war came suddenly close to home.
Some time later my mother met an old school friend who worked at the Labour Exchange. He told her of the Government Training scheme and convinced her that it would help me get entry into a trade and more pay.
It must have taken a lot of heart searching for her to make the decision to tell me about this and then encourage me to go for the interview, for without my wages, balancing her budget would become almost impossible.
Because she seemed eager for me to go, I didn’t think what a sacrifice she was making. Even so, I was reluctant to leave home and it was only the thought, that I would be doing my bit for the war effort, that helped me decide to go.
A New Life
So on Feb 4th 1941, nervous and excited, I got on a train for Glasgow.
The Cowlairs Training Centre was part of the famed Cowlairs Locomotive Factory in Springburn. On our arrival we were allocated billets. Mine was at 33, Drumbottie Road, Balornock, the home of Mrs Fleming, who had agreed to take three trainees.
One, Jimmy McMenemy, was a colour mixer at an Edinburgh paint firm. The other came from Elgin. We all slept in one room on bunk beds.
The Centre fixed the lodging charges. We were given 26/- (£1.30p) a week and 21/-(£1.05p) of this was for bed and breakfast and supper.
During the day, the Centre’s canteen provided a hot 3-course meal but at night only cold snacks, so the night shift pay was increased by 5/- to pay the landlady for the cooked meal she had to provide.
The canteen was warm and full of cooking aromas and was the only place where we could mix easily with the other trainees.
And what a mix it was. Lads from the Isles, Northern and Western, and from all parts of the Mainland right down to Newcastle and Carlisle. The different dialects as well as the Gaelic making it seem like a minor Tower of Babel
The three-shift system restricted our social life, but we couldn’t afford one anyway
To fill in my free time and keep expenses down I occasionally went to scout meetings.
I also volunteered for part time work at a First Aid Post where I got subsidised snacks and some table-tennis practice.
Glasgow Blitz
I spent one evening of the Glasgow Blitz there and remember listening with mounting fear as the exploding bombs fell closer and closer. Fortunately they did not reach us. In the early hours the priest who had gone out from the post to a crashed bomber, told us how he gave the last rites to a German airman.
A few days later I went by tram through Clydebank and was amazed to see, bizarrely among all the destruction, three columns of communal lavatories left standing five-high. As they were only attached to the building by a stairway and were held together by the plumbing they had survived intact.
Another result of the Glasgow Blitz was the complete demolition of Mitchell’s cigarette warehouse. This brought an immediate cigarette famine.
Our supply ran out at the weekend. We then searched our pockets and any other possible place for dog-ends that we rolled into wispy thin and foul tasting substitutes. They ran out on Sunday so we set off down through Springburn, along Parliamentary Road and down Renfield St to Central Station, stopping at every shop and kiosk on the way there — and back.
In desperation we went into the newsagent across the road from the digs and were amazed when he let us have ten Woodbines apiece. It was like manna from heaven, and more unexpected.
I swapped billets a couple of times to be with my workmates, my last landlady was called Gallagher. Her husband Charlie, having been a full time fireman, had lost arm at a fire. He had an artificial one, which I occasionally helped him with, and still worked at the local Fire Station on office duties.
He told fascinating stories about fire-fighting and when a local cinema burnt down he told me the fire had been due to a smouldering cigarette and said that this was the most common cause of fires in public places.
Hard Graft
The Tutors at the Training Centre were all time-served engineers. At least one of these had worked in a tool-room and was rightly proud of his expertise.
Another was a strong Trade Unionist and took every opportunity to spread the gospel to his pupils.
Most instructors conscientiously tried to pass on their knowledge and skills. To them, we must have seemed like very stony ground.
None of us had much experience of engineering so it wasn’t easy for us either. The first six weeks of the course was spent sawing and filing, trying to make intricate test pieces from scrap metal. If we botched it, we were sent to pick another piece of rusted scrap from the heap at the back of the loco works and start again.
The rest of the course was a doddle by comparison.
Introduction to Warplanes
At last we were passed as adequate for the tasks ahead and sent to employers around Britain.
Along with a couple of dozen others, I was sent to Inverkiething in Fife. From there we were taken to the Royal Navy Aircraft Repair Yard at Donibristle where we booked in, were given our works numbers and details of hours and so on and then sent to Dunfermline to find digs.
From Bi-planes to Jets
I worked there for about fifteen months repairing Fleet Air Arm aircraft from bi-planes like Swordfish and Albacore to the up-to-date U.S. fighter, the Grumman Martlett. At last I was making a worthwhile contribution to the war. It turned out I was also preparing myself for the even more fulfilling role of Airframe Fitter in the RAF.
From late 1942 I worked on Spitfires, Tempests and finally the latest Jet Aircraft the Meteor IV, before returning to civilian life in February 1947.

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