Mr Leiper: Come on in, you can fire away

Lauren: How long were you a billeting officer for?

Mr Leiper: Oh, I wasn't a billeting officer. His job was to find houses for the evacuees to go in. You see, they came off the train at Cove Station. From Glasgow and Dundee, mostly Glasgow. And they all got lined up. And marched up, right up to Cove Road to the school, which you would call the Community Centre now. Know where that is? Then they went in there and if I remember right, you got a meal and then they were directed to this one and that one.

Mrs Smith, Mrs Booth - you know what I mean? Now they were all taken into houses - some of them got on all right but some of them didn't. Some of them were put into houses where they weren't wanting them really but they only took them in to get paid and get extra rations, and it didn't work out. Then they went to school on a Saturday because there were too much for the whole school. There were four classrooms in Cove School. There was Miss Crombie, which was older, that could use the strap. Do you know what the strap is? And she sure could use it. Then there was Miss Watson, I can't remember who the other one was and then there was - we called him Smithy, he was the Headmaster and he sure could use the strap as well. The evacuees didn't exactly fit in, you know. So, I saw the photograph in the Chronicle where some of them were dressed up as evacuees. Well, it's not the dresses that I have seen way back all those years ago. Some of them were half tidy, I couldn't explain. They weren't like the way that you dress - they just couldn't afford to dress the way that you did.

Chris: How old were you when the war started?

Mr Leiper: Thirteen. They didn't stay long. Some of them did. Some of them got on well. In fact some of them came back here and married. But, very few of them, because it wasn't their environment. I mean let's face it, they were coming out of a busy place, like Glasgow, slums and the rest of it and they came into a different environment altogether. And the kids didn't like them. Because they came from Glasgow, they came from Dundee. They didn't like you if you came from Aberdeen. That was the kind of environment it was. But that photograph I saw in the Chronicle, they didn't have plastic coats. Some of them didn't even have coats. They were tidy though, I will say they were tidy, but they were poor, yes, very poor.

Mrs Carroll: Do you think our pupils were too over-dressed?

Mr Leiper: Oh yes, definitely. Mind you let's face it; there was very little wages. When I got married over 53 years ago, I'd only £3 in my pocket. But I've had a honeymoon for the past 53 years.

Lauren: Who was the billeting officer?

Mrs Leiper: Mr Leiper's mother. She made the food and everything for the evacuees and where the children went to live.

Daniel: What did you eat during the war?

Mr Leiper: Spam was the thing of the day at that time. Do you know what Spam is? No? Well, its actually quite good, a lot of people used to like it. I suppose you call it next to corned beef. Between corned beef and ham really. Do you know what corned beef is? Well, it's a bit like that.

Chris: Was there competition between the people from Cove and the evacuees?

Mr Leiper: In what way?

Chris: Rivalry

Mr Leiper: No. They were clannish, clannish you see. They didn't mix. Cove has always been clannish, but all the villages are like that.

Mrs Carroll: How long did they stay for?

Mr Leiper: Oh some of them stayed until the war had finished, very few, but some of them did. As I say some of them came back and got married. I mean let's face it, some of these kids came up, I mean you and the kids here, you don't know what poverty is, and I'm speaking about poverty.

Mrs Carroll: Were they all given a family to stay with?

Mr Leiper: Oh yes, they were boarded in houses. You see the thing was this - leaflets went out. They sent out leaflets to everyone - you put down your name if you wanted to take in evacuees and there were a lot of people putting down their names to get an evacuee, which was for one thing only - for the extra money and the extra rations. Well I suppose you can't understand, taking a youngster and you just put them in there. Other people took them in for the love of it and I'm not kidding you there - I mean there was. Some people took in from the Germans and took them up as though they were their own.