William Rodger is a Great Uncle of One of the Loirston Pupils.

In September 1939 the Second World War broke out. Because of the fear that bombing of large cities would result in very heavy casualties plans had been made to evacuate school children to the countryside. This fear arose during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s when German bombers destroyed towns and killed many people.

In some very large cities, particularly London, the children were brought to the railway stations by their parents. There the people in charge of the evacuation programme, who formed the children into family and school groups, met them. The children then had labels (like luggage labels) attached to them. The children, accompanied by guides, were then shepherded onto trains going to various destinations in the countryside where the new billeting officers met them. These officers then took the children to various houses where the local families had been told they had to take in and look after the children. Many of these children stayed in their new country homes for several years during the war when London was very badly bombed. Not everyone was happy but the children were safe and many of these city children said afterwards that they had the adventure of their young lives. In those days before television many city children had never seen the countryside and all its wonderful animals. Some children were even evacuated by ship to Canada and remained there throughout the war.

In Glasgow, I was 12 years old when the war started. In June I had left my primary school and was ready to go to my high school in September. But, as soon as the war began the headmaster of the high school told my parents that the school would not open until the city of Glasgow was safe from serious bombing. All parents like my father and mother were asked to send their children to relatives who lived in the country away from the city. In 1939 although many people like my parents lived and worked in the city they had been born in the countryside where my grandmother and other very old relatives still lived.
I was sent to live with a very old grand aunt (my grandmother's older sister - could anyone be so old?) in a village in Fife in an ancient house with only gas lighting. Every school day I had to take the local bus 10 miles to school in Cupar Fife where there were other boys and girls who had also been evacuated - but not from Glasgow but from Edinburgh - there was great rivalry between these two cities! This was a big adventure. Nowadays, when nearly everyone has a car, and travels around without noticing every day, 10 miles is a short distance. In 1939 very few people had cars. Usually school was only one or two miles from home and pupils walked. To be allowed to travel on my own on a bus to school and back was a big adventure.
I discovered that in the country there were lots of pleasant things to do in my spare time. I made friends with the village miller who had a meal mill worked by a waterwheel. I went with the mill cart and horse carrying the milled cereal (oats and barley) back to the local farms. I watched the quarrymen dynamite the rock from the local quarry. I chased rabbits during the harvest in the fields. But above all I made many new friends - of course I had to learn what I thought at that time with a new language. Although my new friends spoke English at school, outside they spoke the local dialect - something like the Doric Scots with lots of very unusual words - and they spoke it very quickly.

But all this was far too good to last. By the beginning of 1940 those in charge believed that Glasgow would not be seriously bombed. They were wrong - in 1941 the city was seriously bombed. My high school reopened. I was returned to home in Glasgow and a very dull life. But I never forgot. Later in the war for two summers (during the school holidays) I worked on a Fife farm that I had visited on the miller's cart! War is always terrible but many of the children, including me, made the most of their time as evacuees.

We who lived during the terrible war thought that everyone would remember those days - but memories are very short. Our memories have slipped away, including the evacuation adventure, so maybe it is a good thing that we old ones write them down for others to read.