Discusses some of the documents she has preserved from the war period

What did he have to do when he was captured?
Em. Well I remember my brother telling me when he came home. He was a piper and he wore his kilt his socks and his skean dubh and when he knew he was going to be taken, now they were absolutely surrounded there was no chance, they wirna gonna get out at all and he was on a farm he took his skean dubh out his sock and he put it in a great big pile of turnips that was there as if the Germans had caught him with the skean dubh - that was a weapon and they would have killed him so he took his Shen Dubh and hid it amongst the turnips and when he came back home 5 years later he wanted to go back to France look for his skean dubh, but they wouldn't let him.

I don't know if you'll have seen one of these. My husband was in the Air Force, the Air Force an' he was a gunner an that was his Flying Logbook. In that he had to write down every hour that he flew everything, who was the pilot, and what he did and where he flew to and every bit. - every hour he flew during the war and what he did. Whether it daytime or night-time and he recorded every hour.

So if say he was up in the air he would have to write out the notes again?
No. They would write when they came back. They wouldn't take the logbook with them, what they would do, I think was they mustered, he flew flying boats. Now you've never heard of a flying boat have you - a seaplane [explanation of seaplane] - they called them flying boats - seaplanes, because he had to get a wee boat out to his plane. An' then get in the plane an' then take off. An' what they did was, Coastal Command they cruised the waters looking for submarines - enemy submarines. [Noise] And what they did, well were looking for submarines to drop depth charges. I'll tell you a story about that. My wee grandson was - we'er than you - and he asked his Papa - his papa was telling him what he did in the war - and did you kill and did you sink any submarines papa? His papa thought if I tell him I actually sunk a submarine and killed somebody he wouldn't be very happy with me so he said - No but I may have killed a few whales - and the wee boy went -oooooh papa why did you kill the whales, the whales did you no harm at all, you were meant to kill the Japanese. [Laughs] So he wasn't very pleased at his papa killing the whales.

So he probably say killed quite a few people say?
Hmm.Well he did not want to tell his grandson he had probably sank a few submarines an' the also did air sea rescue, know like if a fighter plane came down they went out an' rescued victims, or boats. They did a lot of air sea rescue. You might want to see that [hands over logbook]. An' that was his discharge papers telling him he had been a good boy. [reaching into envelope] These things - every soldier, every sailor, every airman wore these, these are what they called his dogtags they had his name on them and it has his number and they never, they weren't allowed to take them off - see how dirty it is - and he kept that one all the time [mixed voices] And that was his [round patch] he wore that up there [above right breast pocket] to show he was aircrew and that he was flying and that he was a gunner. And that was when he was a warrant officer [showing patches on right sleeve cuff] wore them on their sleeves. [IDcard] Now that was what everybody had. That was your Identity Card an' you carried it with you everywhere. And that was my husband's he lived in Broomhill and when he married me he came to live in Bankview Terrace and we to live in Beech Crescent an' that was, that's not my original one because when I got married and I got my name changed I had to get a new one. I don't know where my original went.

Where did you get married?
Where did I get married? In Denholmhead in Burnbridge after the war.

Are these quite valuable to you?
They are very valuable to me and probably to Miss Quinn. And you know the logbooks and his papers. There wouldn't be many logbooks.