Do you have a funny memory from the war?
Well I think one of the funniest memories very early on in the war, I was at school, in Largs, and they had what was known as Air Raid Precautions – ARP. And this was case you would be gassed or, you know, bombed, and because – I was in third year at school. And every Saturday they got a lot of the girls and they put plastic – bits of plasticine on our arms and our legs as if it was injury. And we were told to put on our bathing costumes – there was no bikinis in these days – and trousers and a warm top. And we would be sent out – I used to live –Moorburn Road? And they came round – the ARP wardens – with Bailey’s coal lorry. And they took you into the back of it and we were like you, we giggled and laughed all the way – down to the Stevenston Insitute which was the place – and you had to take off your trousers and your top and they hosed you down with ice cold water – because that was to get rid of the gas. And that was very funny memory because it just reminded me with you girls laughing today. I laughed and laughed. I didn’t laugh so much the things that happened to me after that but I was just a youngster then. OK.

It would be cold…

It was cold, yes.

The most vivid recollection I have of any incident during the war I suppose was – I served for four years in the Royal Navy and during one of the Russian convoys that were on erm, there was always a danger of the German U-boats attacking the Destroyer that I was serving on – the navy ships in the convoy – eh, and on this one occasion the officer in charge actually got a message that the torpedo was heading towards our ship. It was possible to detect the track of a torpedo fired by a U-boat and you could follow it all the way as it approached the ship and it was likely to hit our ship by inches and by a great presence of mind the officer on the watch was able to stop one engine and turn the ship very quickly so that by the time the torpedo reached the ship the ship was actually on a parallel course to the torpedo and we actually knew that it was passing us within about five metres of the ship itself. That’s certainly the one – I don’t think we would ever recall many dangerous events during the war – you forget though - but that was one very vivid recollection I have when the ship was within literally inches of being torpedoed.

How did you hear the war was over and how did you feel about it?

Well again, just like we anticipated the start of the war, we were able to anticipate the end of the war because the German forces were being pushed back further and further with the British and Americans on one side and the Russians on the other side – the Germans were squashed. And we were waiting for the last shot to be fired. We were listening to the radio all the time, the radio was on – always next news bulletin and all the rest of it – and we heard the war – Germany was defeated, they’d surrendered. How did we feel? Terrific. Nobody else was going to get killed, we hoped the first thing that happened was – in Paisley anyway - we went down to a celebration at Paisley cross at midnight and boys and girls from the school – didn’t matter what age they were – we all congregated down at the Paisley cross and celebrations, singing and horns going and all the rest of it. But that was for VE day. For VJ day I was actually on holiday in Dunoon and it would be about the 15th – no sorry, the 18th of August 1945 when all the ships in the Clyde hooters went – all the horns and everyone knew the war was over because three days previously the Atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan and they were big bombs and we knew that Japan was defeated that way. And we knew late on at night, early in the morning that Japan had been defeated by the ships in the Clyde.