Now I remember where I was when war was declared. I was in church, at that time it was Causewayend Church now it’s St Stephens and Mr Davies is your school Chaplin, is that right? Yes, well we all knew that the Prime Minister was due to make a broadcast and we had a funny feeling that it wasn’t going to be a very nice broadcast and the minister had arranged for someone to wait at home get the news and come and tell him. I remember his son going up the pulpit steps and handing a bit of paper to his dad. Well we knew what it was. We had declared war on Germany and somehow or other, we weren’t told, we weren’t asked, we all stood up. We stood for a few minutes our thoughts and our fears. At the end of the service there was a baby brought in to be baptised and only his mummy was there the daddy had been called up. Now there were 4 people in the forces they had to go. They had territorial people who were civilians but trained to be soldiers, they were away, reserves they were away and this mum brought her little boy to be baptised and you know when that little boy knew his dad. How old was he? He was 6 years old before he really got to know his dad. His dad was away overseas for years and years at a time. Now you wouldn’t have liked that would you? No. That’s what the little people had growing up they didn’t see their daddy’s for 2,3,4,5 nearly 6 years and that was how things were in those days.

We thought the war was going to be over in 6 months, how wrong we were! It took 6 years before we had the first peace. Now words, phrases were used and normal were Calling Up Papers and Called Up because the army couldn’t cope with the, the big army in Germany .Civilians were brought in you’ve heard about being called up and day you would hear so and so has their papers or so and so has got this. They were taken at all ages unless unfit you didn’t get a choice you didn’t say Well I don’t want to go you had to go. Girls and women were called up too. So that was a thing that happened and you never knew when your friends would say I’m going away. This happened all through the war.

But the lassies as well were called away and as time wore on they were needing more folk and more folk. A lot of them went down south and helped in the ship building. I had a brother-in-law he was a joiner to trade he went down to Glasgow to the ship building yard. I had another brother-in-law who lived in Elgin he was a baker to trade. He was called up to the army for a cook. I had a brother in Aberdeen he drove a lorry long distance down south. He was called up lorry the lot.