Mary Maclean was evacuated
from Glasgow to live with relatives in Skye
Well,
one memory is that the Government and the authorities
in Glasgow realised that maybe Glasgow would be used as
a target for bombing because of, because of how important
it was for shipbuilding, so they advised the parents to
evacuate all the children, that's to send them away from
the city and to go to the, and stay in the country and
with, that's what happened to lots of children in Glasgow
and the Glasgow Corporation arranged for places for them
to stay. But we were in the position that we had so many
relatives in Skye and they all sent us word and said,
'You'd better come to Skye.' So we did. I came first of
all to Portree to stay with my father's mother - that
was my grandmother in Portree - and my aunts. So I stayed
there for nine months, and the first nine months of the
war, well, nothing drastic happened in Glasgow. Things
were quite quiet and I think we were getting homesick.
I used to write my mother and I used to say, 'I wish we
could go back to Glasgow', although it was very nice in
Portree School. We got on all right but we wanted back
to Glasgow and, em, so after nine months, my, another
sister, she stayed behind but my other sister and my younger
brother, we went back to Glasgow.