Lady Bruce discusses air raids and the bombing of the Forth Bridge

Before I went into the army I was stuck here and I was here when they bombed the Forth Bridge and up that room wall there were great big bits of shrapnel. Guns.

You are the first one that has mentioned the Forth Bridge was actually bombed.
Yes Yes.

Do you remember when that was?
I don't, no.

A year?
It must have been - was it 38 or 39 when the war started?
39
Must have been 40 - 1940.
1940.
And they had a gun site at Primrose that was the nearest one to us. And I think the nearest bomb was dropped between Primrose and here.

So did you actually see it …?
There were raids more or less every night for quite a long time. It was very very noisy. I had, I wasn't old enough to do it but there was nobody else wanted to do it, and so I looked after the Guides, Girl Guides, and when that, in what was the air raid shelter down there in the village and one night when we were doing our knots and whatever and the sirens went off and of course there was no mobile telephones or anything. There was no way of contacting the parents or anything so I said to the girls we would just have to wait till they all came over cos they were in the safest place. And the mothers were quite happy. At em, when I was in Italy it was really, there was no war on there, in that area and what we used to do was have rations of corned beef and all sorts of things like that and we used to take them down to the lovely seaside places like Positano which is now a resort, an expensive resort, and we stayed there for the weekend, and we had spaghetti and all the Italian food and they just took the tin of bully-beef and put us up, but you had to be so careful because all the children were always thieving and all they wanted was cigarettes and the army people got free cigarettes and they knew this and I always had some, to give them one or two, and of course this child seized it and it was in a tin box and cut his hand, however I thought well if he is going to do that then he deserved it - the pain. Then you have to watch out , we had open trucks to go about in and you had to really watch your luggage, bags and everything or they were on to them, as soon as the trucks stopped they were on there and stealing everything.

I didn't think it was quite so bad.

Any funny moments or sad moments, quite often interesting?
It was bad when you had to tell someone that someone had been killed.

Was it no scary when on the bridge with then aye.
I think there was a train going over, yes, but they didn't hit anything, they didn't hit.

One of the other people we were interviewing had said about a plane going under the Forth Bridge.
Yes, I think it was a stunt kind of thing, I don't think it was a war plane.

Yes, they thought it was a war plane but we couldn't find any details on it.
I don't think so. There are masses of ships out there in the river. Always, the whole time and my parents had a big empty room and they had that all set up and they, and submarines used to come in and the men came up and have rest time.

Were any of the other family involved in the war?
My sister was in the WAAF, and both, both my brothers were in the Scots Guards and my youngest brother was doing national service but he had em what do you call it when tell red and green.
Colour Blindness.
And he was in the intelligence corp.

And did they all make it safely through?
Yes. My brother was very badly wounded in his leg so he walks with a stick now.

Is this the youngest one or …?
The oldest one.
The oldest brother.
And my mother was in the WRVS and my father was in the home guard. So we were completely.
When I was a private or as a gunner as we were called we had duties to do which was cleaning other peoples mess and the worst one I had was scrubbing the Naafi floor and they had had a, the sergeants had had a party and the beer was all over the floor and the stink was absolutely disgusting.