When the Lights Come on Again

by Maggie Craig

  Other people rushed out into the open, terrified by the thought of sitting on the ground floor of three- and four-storey tenements with all that masonry above them. Some of them spent the night in the park - and lived.

  One of the planes which had taken off from Stavanger in Norway dropped a parachute mine on one of the Holy City terraces. The front wall was completely blown off and thrown across the street. Helen Gallagher, tucked between Conor and her father as the family sat in the reinforced tenement close, was sucked clean out of the building by the blast. Her last recollection was of her father trying to grab her. Then nothing. Only blackness.

  First-aid posts had to be hurriedly moved to other sites when their original locations were hit. A school which housed one of them was one of the first places to go up. Along with the timber store at Singer’s, it made a wonderful beacon for the incoming German pilots, guiding them to their prey.

  ‘At least,’ said Peter MacMillan laconically to a fellow warden, ‘we’ve got enough light to see by. It makes a nice change.’

  ‘Why are we going this way?’ asked Liz, as they headed along Highburgh Road towards Great Western Road, following the ambulance. She was breathless after the run to Morag. Fortunately, the little car had been parked not too far away. ‘Wouldn’t Dumbarton Road be quicker?’

  ‘Think about it, Liz,’ urged Adam. ‘We’ll have to go into Clydebank from the top - along the Boulevard and drop down that way. Dumbarton Road could well be impassable. They’ll be trying to hit John Brown’s and Rothesay Dock, although they’ll be going for Singer’s too, I expect— Oh, hell, I’m sorry.’

  He took his hand briefly off the wheel and laid it on her own. She was convulsively clutching the bundle of dressings and bandages.

  John Brown’s and Rothesay Dock. Her parents’ house was sandwiched between the two. And Helen’s home was only yards away from Singer’s.

  Oh, please God, let Helen and the baby be safe. And Mother and Father. And Grandad too. With a guilty start, Liz realised that everyone would be sending up the same sort of prayer. Not at the expense of anyone else, God. Oh God, not that.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right about this? About coming?’ Adam swung the wheel to turn them from Hyndland Road into Great Western Road.

  ‘I’ll have to be, won’t I? I’m not going to be much bloody use to anybody otherwise.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  They drove in silence past the handsome villas on Great Western Road and the grounds of Gartnavel, the rambling Victorian psychiatric hospital set in its own grounds behind Bingham’s Pond. They passed through the man-made cavern of the red sandstone tenements at Anniesland Cross. When they emerged from them they got a full view of the night sky over Clydebank.

  ‘God Almighty!’

  ‘What pretty colours,’ drawled Jim Barclay from the back seat. Liz rounded on him, eyes blazing as brightly as the flames in front of them.

  ‘That’s my home town that’s burning!’

  The lad’s face crumpled and he stretched a hand forward to her. ‘Och, MacMillan, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m trying to pretend that I’m not scared to death, that’s all!’

  She found his hand and squeezed it. ‘I know,’ she said, her voice breaking. ‘I know.’

  ‘Maybe we should all say a wee prayer,’ muttered Adam. Youthful cynicism forgotten, they did so.

  ‘Shall I try St Jude as well?’

  ‘Every saint you can think of,’ said Adam. ‘We’re not proud. I can think of a poem which might be appropriate, too. Into the valley of death rode the six hundred, perhaps. What the fu—’

  Liz blinked. She’d rarely heard him swear. Given that he’d stamped down hard on the brakes in order to prevent Morag disappearing down a large crater which had materialized in front of them, she was disposed to let it go. Just this once.

  He reversed and swerved over on to the other carriageway of the Boulevard to get around the obstruction. Liz glanced over at the fields to her left. The open area between the road and East Kilbowie was full of bright lights.

  ‘Incendiaries, I think,’ muttered Jim Barclay. ‘At least they won’t do much harm there.’

  ‘Here goes,’ said Adam a few minutes later, as he pulled off the Boulevard into Kilbowie Road. ‘Where to, Liz? I’m not sure how far we’ll be able to take the car.’

  ‘Radnor Park Church Hall,’ she said breathlessly: ‘There’s a first-aid post there. It’s not far. Keep going along Kilbowie Road as far as you can.’

  There were people everywhere: lying on stretchers, slumped in chairs, being brought in by rescue parties. First-aiders were doing what they could, but the relief was palpable when the white-coated medical students entered the room. A shout of welcome went up.

  ‘Nice to be appreciated at last,’ muttered Jim Barclay. As they passed through the rows of stretchers and camp beds, heading for the people who seemed to be in charge, a middle-aged man, his face smeared with grime and streaks of blood, lifted a hand and gripped Adam’s sleeve.

  ‘God bless you for coming, son. God bless you.’

  Adam patted him gently on the shoulder. It was the one part of him which seemed to be uninjured. Standing behind Adam, waiting for him to move on, Liz glanced down at the grey blanket which covered the lower half of the man’s body. It was curiously flat. Then she realized. He had lost his legs.

  She wanted to be sick. Behind her, Jim gripped her elbow. She heard Adam’s voice through a buzzing in her ears.

  ‘We’ll be right with you, sir. Give us a minute or two to get organized.’

  He moved on, his white sleeve now stained red. The patients come first. The patients come first. Liz forced down the bile rising in her throat and plastered a smile onto her face.

  ‘God bless you too, pet. We need a few bonnie nurses to go with the handsome doctors, is that no’ right?’

  Like Adam, she put a comforting hand to the man’s shoulder. ‘Nae bother,’ she said. ‘We didnae want to miss out on the excitement.’

  Incredibly, the blood-stained face broke into a smile. ‘Aye, better than Guy Fawkes Night this, eh, hen? Imagine yon young doctor calling me sir! And him so well-spoken too.’

  Half an hour later the man died in Liz’s arms. She laid him gently down and went on to the next person who needed her. She was desperately worried about her own people: her parents, Helen, her grandfather, the Gallaghers. Every moment she dreaded turning round and seeing one of her own loved ones lying there with terrible injuries.

  She dealt with it in the only way she knew how - in the only way possible. As the bombs fell all around them, Liz cleaned wounds, bandaged limbs, applied dressings and gave what reassurance she could to dazed and distressed people.

  In a strange way she was helped by the sheer awfulness of it all. Was she really in Clydebank, her own familiar little home town? Could this horror actually be happening?

  It was a night when she saw the best and the worst of humanity. A line of Robert Burns came back to her: man’s inhumanity to man. She wondered about the people who had chosen to unleash this awful suffering on a civilian population, snug in their houses on a cold March night, listening to the nine o’clock news on the wireless.

  She tended a mother who was desperately clutching a baby. Liz suspected the poor little mite was dead. It was... and Liz persuaded the girl to let go of her precious burden.

  ‘We have to identify the dead, Nurse,’ someone murmured in her ear, sotto voce so that the young mother didn’t hear. ‘As far as we can. Some luggage labels for you.’ And so, dry-eyed, Liz coaxed the Christian name and surname of the child - a little girl - out of the shocked mother, and tied a luggage label around the tiny blood-stained wrist.

  There was inhumanity on the ground too: people who thought only of themselves, who wanted their injuries treated now - before others who were much more seriously hurt. Liz also knew there would be people out there taking advantage of the situation. There would be looting going on. But her abiding memory was of people
’s courage and care for each other.

  The messenger boys were risking their young lives to keep the control centre and the first-aid and ARP posts in touch with each other. Ambulance drivers were taking their lives in their hands to transport the badly injured to hospitals outside the danger zone.

  Rescue workers, dashing from close to close as the bombs dropped, were saving other people’s families whilst desperately worried about their own. They spoke also of men and women crawling back into the wreckage of their ruined buildings to comfort neighbours who were trapped.

  There were the badly wounded people who, seeing the fear in others’ faces, made jokes in the midst of their pain. As she moved among the injured, Liz heard little snatches of conversation.

  One man reported being blown out of his house and waking up to find himself surrounded by packets of tea.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Stuffed a few of them in my pockets, of course. Would you like one, Doctor?’

  Another, garrulous with relief because both he and his wife had survived a bomb which had buried several of their neighbours, was now making fun of his better half.

  ‘We were in the close and she wanted to go back up to the hoose. To check that the fire was still in, if you please! Well, says I to her - it’s Jerry who’s keeping the home fires burning for us the night! And he’s making a bloody good job of it, tae!’

  Shortly before midnight they heard that the whisky bond at Yoker Distillery had sustained a direct hit. That provoked an unreasonable amount of hilarity.

  ‘I expect we’re all delirious,’ said Adam, glancing up from the little girl he was attending to. ‘Going a bit hysterical.’

  An hour or so later, they realized that the noise overhead had diminished a little.

  ‘Just when we were beginning to get used to them too,’ said Jim Barclay.

  “There’s no reason to suppose they won’t be back,’ came the grim response.

  The lull allowed the removal of more of the injured to hospital. Liz was asked to accompany two of them to Canniesburn Hospital in Bearsden. The phones being out, she was also to ask how many more they might be able to take. Local hospitals like Blawarthill had filled up quickly. The injured were going to have to be taken further afield.

  ‘Cup of tea before you go back into the lion’s den, Nurse?’ asked the sister at Canniesburn, who then persuaded Liz and the ambulance driver to take five minutes to drink one. The sister laid a hand on both their shoulders.

  ‘God speed.’

  When she got back to the first-aid post, Liz stood back to allow a stretcher to be carried out to another ambulance.

  ‘Hello, Liz,’ said the boy lying on it.

  ‘Dominic! Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ve buggered my leg,’ he said cheerfully. ‘There was I, cycling along minding my own business, when this dirty great piece of timber falls on top of me. Knackered the bike as well.’

  ‘Are they taking you to Canniesburn?’

  One of the stretcher-bearers answered for him. ‘No, he’s heading for Killearn. Some fresh country air for this lad.’

  ‘It’s a bit far out,’ said Dominic, with a quick frown. ‘It’ll be difficult for anyone to visit me.’

  ‘We’ll manage somehow,’ said Liz. ‘There’s buses go out that way.’ He was being put into the ambulance now, struggling to sit up so he could still see her.

  ‘Liz, will you let them know at home what’s happened? Ma’ll be real worried about me.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised.

  ‘Och, and Liz,’ he said. ‘Don’t tell Ma that I said my leg was buggered. I don’t want a cuff round the ear when she comes out to visit me.’ He grinned. ‘Put it a wee bit more politely.’

  ‘Nae bother,’ she said. She gave him a wave and a smile before the ambulance doors were slammed shut.

  The first person Liz spotted when she went back into the church hall was her grandfather in his ARP uniform. She flew to his side.

  ‘It’s all right, hen,’ he told her after he had given her a hug which took her breath away. ‘I think your mother and father are probably all right. They seem to have missed Brown’s. There’s been some damage, but no’ as much as you might expect.’

  Relief flooded through her. In the morning I’m going down there, she thought. I’ll make it up with them. It’s not worth it. This is no time to bear a grudge.

  ‘What about the Holy City, Grandad? Do you know what’s happening there?’

  His face betrayed his knowledge. ‘They’ve taken a hell of a beating, hen.’

  Helen and the baby! Oh, please God, let them be all right! Terror made her angry, snapping her out of her previous unnatural calmness.

  ‘Well, is anybody doing anything to help them? Let me past, Grandad, I’ve got to go and see for myself!’

  The old man gripped her shoulders with a strength which belied his years.

  ‘Lizzie! You cannae. It’s bloody dangerous out there. There’s enough folk risking their necks as it is. And you’re needed here!’

  The bombardment started again. The merciless pounding of the town went on for another four hours.

  Thirty-five

  It was half past six in the morning and it was over at last. The all-clear had sounded some time ago and dawn had broken. A large convoy of ambulances had arrived to ferry the remaining casualties out. Hospitals all around Glasgow were taking them in.

  More help had arrived in the devastated town, not least a squadron of mobile canteens, many of them run by the Women’s Voluntary Service.

  ‘Thank God for the WVS,’ said one of the medics wearily. ‘What would we do without you, ladies?’ He lifted his cup in a toasting gesture.

  ‘What would we have done without you, young man?’ replied the woman, offering Liz a cup of tea as she sat slumped at a table with her head in her hands.

  She shook her head and stood up. ‘No thanks. I have to go and see if my friend is all right. And my folks.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Adam, ‘but we’re going to drink a cup of tea and have something to eat first. A quick bite - a roll or something.’

  ‘I don’t want anything.’

  ‘Liz, you’ve been up all night. And you’ll be no use to anybody if you collapse of exhaustion.’

  She gave in. She could see she wasn’t going to get anywhere unless she did. She bolted down a couple of mouthfuls of bread roll and drank the tea so fast it scalded her mouth.

  Her ears were still ringing with the remembered noises of last night: the crashing and whooshing and booming of the bombs dropping, the screams and cries of the injured. The sounds were all the louder in her head because of the eerie quiet which now lay like a pall over the town. It was uncanny. Clydebank was a place of bustle and industry. She had never experienced such stillness here.

  In increasing distress, she took in the devastation wrought by the raid. All around, burned and blasted houses were smouldering. There was a bigger fire somewhere close at hand, too. At Singer’s, she thought. They passed Radnor Street. The buildings were extensively damaged.

  ‘Looks like your grandfather’s going to have to find somewhere else to sleep tonight.’

  They had seen him again this morning, after the all-clear had sounded. It was a relief to know that he, at least, was all right.

  ‘Look at the tram lines,’ said Adam. ‘It’s like a piece of avant-garde sculpture.’ Liz looked. Exploded from their moorings, the lines were standing up like jagged vertical spears. Water mains had burst too. Kilbowie Road was running like a river. And there was a peculiar smell in the air - not only from all the fires which were still raging, but something faintly sweet.

  ‘It’ll be from the distillery at Yoker,’ said Adam, indicating the direction with a lift of his chin. ‘Remember someone told us last night that it had taken a hit? Looks like they got Rothesay Dock, too.’ He turned his head and looked in the other direction, to where a huge pall of smoke was hanging over the Clyde. ‘That looks like oil
burning. Where would that be?’

  ‘Old Kilpatrick,’ said Liz, her words slurred with tiredness. ‘There’s an oil depot there.’ But she wasn’t really listening to him. Her eyes were fixed on the rubble, slates, broken furniture and glass which lay strewn about the street. With a horrible sense of foreboding of worse to come, she picked her way through it, Adam occasionally gripping her elbow to guide her.

  Worse was to come.

  ‘Don’t look,’ he said. He reached out an arm, trying physically to turn her head away, but he was too late. It was the body of a small boy, clearly dead. Her head tucked into Adam’s chest, Liz spoke in an anguished whisper.

  ‘Shouldn’t we do something? Lift him and take him somewhere?’

  She felt him shake his head. ‘No, Liz, that’s not our job. Someone’ll come and get him soon.’ He stopped, and she knew from the way he held her that he had something else to say, something which he was trying to phrase in the kindest way possible. In the end he chose simple words.

  ‘He won’t be the only one. I think I can see a squad down the road. They’ll come up for him soon. They’ve ... I think they’re getting someone else at the moment’

  Held close against him, Liz nodded her head. He was right, of course he was. She pulled out of his embrace and looked up at him, dry-eyed. He cupped her face with his hands, his hazel eyes soft with compassion. ‘All right?’

  ‘All right,’ she replied.

  They turned a corner - and it was like all the newsreel reports she’d ever seen of London and Coventry and Liverpool. She remembered Guernica and the Spanish cities too.

  There were the same surreal pictures: houses which stood like hollow teeth, as though scooped out with a spoon: buildings where the fronts had fallen off, leaving the rooms behind exposed to view. It was pitiful. Liz saw a precariously poised black-leaded range, a big kettle still sitting on it. There were dogs and cats running about everywhere, panicked by the events of the night. She saw with relief that there were people rounding them up.