Somec Memories of the Dynamite - Part 2

To make up to myself for the lack of nice things to eat, I learned to smoke at that time. It was the fashion. Everybody smoked. But as the war progressed, cigarettes became very scarce, and you had to be “in the know” to obtain any at all. A new brand appeared on the market, PASHA by name and they were easily obtainable, and that was because nobody bought them. You had to be very desperate before you lit up a Pasha, because they were the pits. I think they were filled with Turkish tobacco, but I’m not sure. I knew the girl who worked in Tally’s Shop in the main street of Beith, and sometimes she kept me a couple of packs of Capstan under the counter. My mother had very strong views on women smoking and her proud boast used to be “I’ve got four girls and none of them smoke”. Well one of them did and that one was me! She nearly found me out, because one day, when she was up the town for her messages, she went into the tally shop for her special lemonade. Krystal Clear was made over in Lochwinnoch by Struthers, and this was the only firm which used sugar, and not saccharin in their soft drinks, all during the war. So, here was my mother buying her two bottles over the counter, when my friend in all innocence said “Oh, will you tell your daughter her cigarettes are in?” CALAMITY!

When my mother was recounting the incident to me later, she said “The cheek of the girl in the main street telling me she had cigarettes to give me, but I soon let her know that NONE OF MY GIRLS SMOKE”. When I managed to go up to Beith on my day off, I was anxious to know how my friend had got out of a very volatile situation, but she said it was easy. She had just said “Oh, I’m making a mistake, I always mix you up with Mrs Barnes at Low Station, she gets them for her daughter”. This information did nothing to quieten my nerves because Mrs Barnes was another one who was very much against smoking, and if Bessie (the daughter in question) had known that her secret was blown, she would have had a fit. My mother was ever suspicious of me after that. Nearly all my work mates smoked, and a cigarette was something to look forward to in the mess room if your “piece” had been particularly awful. A girl who used to sit beside me at the table, Lily Marshall, was in lodgings in Stevenston, and her landlady made up some awful sandwiches for her. Quite often it was potato crisps spread over bread and margarine, but I thought she had reached a new low when the filling was HP sauce. Lily never complained about it, but I felt she was a victim rather than a casualty of the war, because she wasn’t being properly fed, and she developed TB. And died, aged 21.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though and we enjoyed many a good laugh. Big Jean Bell worked beside me, and she was full of complaints and moans. Certain rules and safety regulations governed every hut, and we were all very conscious about safety, because working with cordite was dangerous in case of fire, and all sorts of friction had to be avoided. A double search at the start of every shift made sure you weren’t wearing anything abrasive, no rings, broaches, suspenders or even kirbigrips were allowed. As the girls walked around the blenders gathering up the purple sticks of cordite inevitably loose sticks would drop on the floor and had to be picked up, before our feet trod on them.

We had a rota in which each girl in turn had a full shift of doing nothing else but continually bending down and clearing the floor of cordite. This was indeed a tiring job and nobody liked it, because you finished the shift dead tired and with aching bones. When it became Big Jean’s night to do it, she always had an excuse to get out of it. She was a big stout lady with lots of chins and no teeth, and she didn’t like hard work, but she needed the money, and sometimes I felt sorry for her, and took her turn. One of her excuses was that she had a big boil on her stomach, just at her belly button, and it was ready to burst, so she couldn’t bend down to pick up cords, because the friction of her knickers against the boil was agony. Amid ribald shouts from the other women “well take them off then” she would say to me, “will you take my turn Hen, and ill see you right wi’ some clothing coupons when you get married”. This was like a carrot to a donkey to me, because clothing coupons had indeed been introduced, and we got so little of them, that Jean’s offer was tempting, and I did as she asked. I didn’t reap my reward right away. No I had to wait ‘til I was leaving Ardeer to get married and go and live in Paisley. She kept her word, and handed me an envelope on my last day there, which I didn’t open ‘til I was on the train going home, and I nearly exploded. They were all the old margarine coupons cut from the ration books at the very start of the scheme. They were still valid, although when things were better organised, we had proper clothing coupons. I was in despair (and rage) when I saw them, because they were all cut up in singles and said MARGARINE of them, and apart from that, you were supposed to present them as a whole page, inside your ration book, and some of the shops could be really sticky about this. So I was spitting feathers, and felt that Big Jean had really pulled a fast one, but it turned out alright, because when I told my Mother my problem she said “I’ll take them up to the Beith Clothing Company and the Wee Jew knows me”. That was a big relief. He was ever so nice, and she came home with a peach satin cami for me and some French knickers too, and I felt that all my efforts in the hut for Big Jean had borne fruit.

We had a foreman in there, whose name was Robert Boyd, but he was commonly known as Bertie-Bad-Fish. This was because some of them had known him before the war when he pushed a wheelbarrow selling fish round the streets of Irvine. To avoid joining the forces he had jumped in to Ardeer, known as Reserved Occupation and now wore his peaked cap and uniform with great authority. I doubt whether they would have taken him anyway in the Army, because he was a white faced, shilpit looking character. I think he fancied me, because several times he invited me out for a night at the pictures, but I was never remotely interested although I would have liked to have seen “Nellie Kellie” when it was showing in Irvine. On one occasion Bertie Bad Fish said he was thinking of putting my name down for promotion, because he thought I was forewoman material, but after my umpteenth refusal to go out with him, he told me one day in very short terms that by “application” had been turned down, because I was too young!! Well, I didn’t want it anyway, and I hadn’t applied so — nothing gained — nothing lost.

I have mentioned before, that at the start of our shift, the foreman came into each hut, and selected girls to be sent elsewhere in the plant, to fill the places of those who hadn’t turned up for work. Mostly it was for the press houses, about a mile away from New Hill, and nearer Ardeer. This was my one dread that I would be one of the girls sent there, and it only happened once. If the fumes were bad in the huts, they were a hundred times worse in the press houses, because the cordite was carried in sacks, warm and reeking, and we had to take it out and put it in a machine which turned the dough-like mixture into the cords, which would eventually go to the huts, once they were dried out in trays. Some of the girls became addicted to the smell, and no one was kept in there on a permanent basis. One girl that I knew, had been overlooked. These fumes were like a drug to her, and she lived for the moment that the men bought the bags in full of warm steaming cordite. I saw it myself of the night that I was there, how she ran forward and opened the neck of the sack, and inhaled deeply.

Maybe this went on for several weeks — I don’t know, but it finally came to an end of night when they were all drinking their tea in the mess room. Mary undressed herself until she was stark naked, and got up on to a table and did a dance. DRUNK ON FUMES. She was very quickly removed in an ambulance up to the Red Cross, just at the gate. I heard later that her stomach had been pumped, and she had recovered alright. In fact, after a lengthy period on the sick, she came back to her work, but she was given an outside job, so in a sense you could say her halcyon days were over. We also heard about a man in the presses, who was afflicted in a similar way with these noxious fumes and he had received the last rites in the ambulance going to Kilmarnoch. I don’t know if he lived or died.

One of the girls we travelled with in the train, worked by herself in a big building at the end of the bogey line, and her name was Violet — a street-wise young woman, originally from Glasgow. She, it was who gave out stores, as they were required, such things as stencils, shellac etc — and she really enjoyed her job, especially as she got the name of entertaining the young soldiers camped up on the hill, keeping look-out for enemy planes. It was a well known fact that if you were on the wee stretch of line going up to the Stores for requisitions, you had to call out her name in good time — VIOLET- just in case she was giving TLC to one of the lads.

In time, she bought herself a fur coat in Glasgow, and she wore it to work with pride. We all professed to admire it, but behind her back we said it was rabbit fur.

When days were darkest and things weren’t going well for us, the voice of Mr Churchill put new life in to us all. I held him in the highest regard, and I firmly believe he won the war for us. My Auntie May in Prestwick knitted him a pair of socks and sent them to him in London, and in return she received a letter from his secretary, thanking her for her gift, and saying that Mr Churchill would wear them in the day of Victory, riding through London. She framed this letter and hung it up on the wall. I can’t knit, but if I could, I too would have made him a pair of socks, because in my estimation he was a leader of men.

When war broke out, the Railway Company put on a train which would start at Beith (North) and take the munition workers to Stevenson. This was very convenient for us all, and it served the three shifts 7-3 — 3-11 and night shift, and over night the train lay at our station at Beith.

One dark winter night when I was getting myself ready to go over and join it, a knock came to the door, and when I answered it, the driver of the train was standing there with a face as white as a ghost, asking “Is your father in?”. My father was a porter at the wee country station but he wasn’t on duty that night.

When he went over with the driver a terrible task awaited them because there had been an accident, and the other man working in the engine was dead. It was while he was coupling the carriages onto the engine that the accident had happened, and he was impaled on the buffers. While the two men were trying to get home down by the light of my Father’s lantern, the air raid warning sounded and the German planes passed overhead, also in the midst of all the horror, the light had to be extinguished and the grisly task conducted in darkness.

So the train didn’t move out of the station that night, and all our thoughts were with the unfortunate man and his wife and young family. Another casualty of the war.

Ardeer was a learning experience alright. I can’t say I was ever too happy in the two years I worked there, but I made a lot of friends, and some of the friendships lasted for years.

Wee Ana Murphy was an English girl, staying for the duration of the war with her Auntie and Uncle in Kilmahew Street, Ardrossan, while Jimmy, her husband was on active service abroad. Ana became my best friend. She had a lovely singing voice, and I only have to hear “Ave Maria” on the radio, or even “When The Deep Purple Falls Over The Shady Garden Walls” for the memory of Ana to come flooding back. She worried constantly about Jimmy, her husband, because he suffered from asthma, and she didn’t think the climate in the Middle East would do his breathing any good. She was a dear, good wee catholic girl, and she too died young, just like Lily Marshall. But at least she saw the war over, and Jimmy home from the fray with never a scratch, and they went back to Manchester and set up home there. This should be the happy ending to their story, but life’s not like that, and the terrible irony is that Ana died in childbirth with their first son. When the letter came to me with the Manchester post mark, and the unfamiliar writing, it was from Jimmy, giving me the terrible news that Ana had passed away. It was to have been either her or the baby, the letter said, and the two of them, Ana and Jimmy, had agreed that the baby was to be saved at all costs. I remember being seized by a blind rage when I read all he had to say, and I couldn’t even bring myself to answer him. What a dirty trick fate had played on my wee friend. Jimmy with his asthma had come home unscathed from the war to give my dear wee friend a child which killed her.

I left the factory in the summer of 1942 to be married and live in Paisley. On the day I finished I was quite sad, because I was leaving behind all these men and women who had been close friends for two years. They presented me with a magnificent silver water jug, tea pot, sugar and cream, and I still don’t know where they managed to get something so exquisite in wartime. Some speeches were made in the mess room about how we’d all had our ups and downs, but — one thing — I had finished up without ever having been delegated to the HONEY BOGIE. It was a standing joke in the place that if you got into any kind of trouble, you were demoted to the Honey Bogie. An explanation is needed here, The girls on the Honey Bogie, dressed in special clothes, went around emptying the pails in the dry toilets, and taking away the contents!

Well somebody had to do it, and if I had been caught that night with the black powder down my bra it might just very well have been me.

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