Glimpses of War in Ardersier and Other Places

(As told by my Mother to her young children.)

I was born on 4 November 1948 and my sister Kathleen on 10 November 1950. We were part of the tail end of the post war baby boom. Our father had been a gunner who became a sergeant and saw service in Italy, Greece and North Africa. But our knowledge of the war apart from his service medals came not from our father who never spoke of what he had experienced or seen but from our mother Vera. Although there are two younger sisters it was to myself and my oldest sister that I most remember asking my mother to recount her wartime memories over and over again. Until I was ten years old we lived in what I later realised was slum tenement property in the centre of Edinburgh before we moved to a new council housing estate on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

My mother was born into a moderately well off working class family with her own parents experience of World War One in her own memories. Her father was a well-known professional footballer and athlete Sam Toner. My mother became an apprentice dressmaker and had just completed her training when war broke out.

Form my earliest memories my mother could be persuaded to tell us about what happened to her when she was young and this included her to her more recent memories of her war experiences. From being drafted into war work she spent most of her war working in munitions factories — one of which was the huge works at Ardersier and other places. From her first memory of the radio broadcasts telling the country that a state of war existed to her work in the factory including many incidents regarding work, prejudices, dealing with supervisors (all male who had protected employment positions due to the war) to the nights out at dances, the long hours, the rationing and how it operated both legally and the black market.

Her stories flowed right up until the end of the her war that ended some time before the actual end due to illness contracted from long term exposure to chemicals in the munitions plants she worked in and her long term recuperation until the announcements at the end of the war.

I am sure that her stories were tailored to the fact that we were small children but essentially did not change much as we grew older in the constant re-telling.

As a young woman she experienced more freedom away from home as she now had to live nearer to the factories in huge camps created for workers in munitions. From the heavy work pushing large bogies packed with a variety of munitions or chemicals she was initially like thousands of others no more than muscle little more than horse power moving the vast weights around the factory day and night. In teams of two they pushed their loads to the thousands of small buildings which were built separately to contain explosions. Smoking was banned but my mother knew that many of the girls smuggled in matches and cigarettes which resulted in large fines if caught. She was convinced that some of the explosions that blew a building up from time to time were caused by someone having a fly smoke.

As time progressed she moved on to work in the buildings and became in time a supervisor in a small unit checking the size and accuracy of shells being a manufactured. The smell of cordite was everywhere. A few of the women got used to making themselves high by deliberately inhaling the fumes and she would see them staggering home as if drunk at the end of a shift.

Stories of the fun and friends she made some of whom we would encounter as young children and my mother would have ling talks wit catching up with their common friends and acquaintances. Then we would move on to her dances where as the war moved on there were less and less UK forces and more and more Americans at local dances with all the background we all know about. She also told us how they seemed like films stars, were often great dancers and, as she and her sisters all had learned to dance from a young age were always assured of partners at these events.

From the pencil lines on legs due to the lack of stockings to the use of her dress-making skills to help herself and her friends make a splash from any material they could lay hands on to turn out well against the competition at dances.

Tales of how neighbours from her child hood were killed in various actions and countries as war proceeded relentlessly on with a growing personal casualty list of her child hood friends and school-mates. People she worked with were blown to bits in a nearby building — the slightest spark could obliterate a whole block.

Rationing was all pervasive in her mind having come from a family whose grandfather ran a small shop in Edinburgh and who basically never wanted for food or clothing. She wove this in with tales of her family holidays in southern Ireland where her memories of living on the farm of a near relative where food was to her young eyes over-flowing where farm hands consumed huge quantities from a big scrubbed wooden table and then to war time rationing as she remembered the contrasts for us.

As a supervisor when was taken up for trip in a plane to be shown how the factory was camouflaged to look like a ploughed field with grass sloping roofs which were difficult to spot by enemy planes unless they came down for a close look. The whole plant was surrounded by anti-aircraft guns but with strict instructions never to open fire in case it attracted more attention and later attacks. On at least one occasion a soldier opened fire against orders no doubt nervous and thinking he had a clear shot. He was apparently put on a charge for disobeying orders as he might have resulted in the destruction of vital munitions factory and huge loss of life.

My mother was she told us transfixed by Churchill’s famous fight them on the beaches speech imagining in her mind the possibility of her and her friends fighting literally with pitchforks and spanners in their hands.

My mother gave us a picture of wartime from a worker, civilian, young woman enjoying life in a tough time and gave us a picture of how resilient she, her family and others were in hard times. She still had in her mind the many hard times within the generations before her and how her parents and those before them had worked towards a better life always thinking of ways even in times of unemployment to make things last, gain part-time work and striving constantly to improve their lives. Wartime Britain gained this determination that nothing was going to be allowed stop them and she was as determined as any soldier to defeat the Germans.

Bill Fernie bill@caithness.org

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