Wattie Louden

When the war started in 1939 Wattie Louden was around 12 years old. He didn’t know what war was about so he was quite excited. Every morning in school they had to learn how to put their gas masks on as quickly as possible in case there was a gas attack and sit with them on for five minutes until the school bell rang.

When the town clock bell sounded that meant that there was to be an invasion but when the church bell sounded that was a warning of gas so you had to put your gas masks on as quickly as possible and when the siren sounded it was an air-raid.

In the war everybody had a job. Two of the most important ones were the ARPs – Air Raid Precautions – they looked out for bombs and the fire watchers looked out for any kind of fire.

At night you had to put up a blackout curtain so no artificial light showed and for some people it took a while to get used to it but most were used to it by the second year of the war.

The aerodrome brought a lot of good to the area by providing more employment so families were better off financially. Also some of the local girls married men from the RAF.

Rationing didn’t affect people in the area too badly because we could always get rabbits, hares, geese and ducks, so compared to other parts of the country we were quite well off. There was a lot of activity in the area such as dances in the old Inver hall, which always seemed to be packed.

When Inver was evacuated Wattie knew most of the people who moved to Tain and that friendship has carried on through the years. It was very upsetting for the families who had a relation in war and not knowing when they would come back. However, at the end of the war most of the men came home. Many had been captured and when they came home after being away for four and a half years there were huge celebrations such as victory parades and dances.

He remembers there being hundreds of wild little white ponies which used to roam the Morrich beside Inver but with the start of the war they were all rounded up and he never knew what happened to them.