A FORMER telegram delivery boy during the Clydebank Blitz is still haunted by the horror of having to hand over messages telling women their sons and husbands had died.
Widower Duncan McIntosh, 89, was only 15 at the time but he will never forget the grief and shock on the women’s faces when he turned up at their doors with telegrams informing them that their loved ones would not be coming home.
Born in Milngavie, East Dunbartonshire, his first job was to deliver telegrams around Bearsden and Drumchapel and he remembers being out on deliveries on the first night of the Clydebank Blitz, two devastating Luftwaffe air raids on the shipbuilding town of Clydebank in Scotland which took place in March 1941.
He was lucky to have survived because a bomb landed just yards from him in the Drumchapel countryside, blowing up a house and forcing him to dive for cover from flying debris and earth.
Duncan, who went on to become a highly successful management consultant and handwriting expert, recalled: “I had to hand deliver about 30 telegrams to people whose sons and husband had been killed in the war and that gave me an insight into people. Some would faint, some would burst into tears, others would come and grip you, some would be ashen-faced.
“I used to have to go and get the neighbours next door to help comfort them. I am still haunted by those days. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and the whole thing comes back to me. It was awful having to tell people they had lost loved ones. I was only a boy at the time and it is with me to this day. It was horrendous.”
He told how he left school early and was desperate to get a job. His first job was delivering telegrams at the age of 15. “Although I lived in Milngavie, I was based in Bearsden, which took in Drumchapel,” he said.
“On the first night of the Clydebank Blitz I was out late delivering telegrams in Drumchapel. At that time it was just fields with a road running through it and a few houses. I was in a field and suddenly a bomb dropped on the road and I had to dive and keep my head down because all the earth and stones were raining down. I was lucky I missed it.
“Across the road there was a bungalow and it had been blown up. My parents took in evacuees from the Clydebank Blitz,” he added.
When Duncan was in his early 20s when he left Scotland and moved down to Nottingham where he worked as a management consultant and handwriting expert.
He returned to Milngavie seven months ago to be closer to the last few surviving members of his family and two weeks ago the former Labour party activist and union official signed up to the SNP because he believes in independence.
During his time down south, Duncan wrote a 20,000-word booklet on how to get a job without qualifications which he circulated during his career to help people find work.
Over a year ago he met former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who resigned last week in a Budget row with David Cameron and George Osborne over cuts in disabled benefits.
He handed him a copy of his booklet but he said IDS never took up his advice on how to get people into employment and instead went ahead with his own “stupid ones” targetting the disabled and vulnerable.
Duncan was part of an old people’s club who had been invited to meet IDS during a visit to Nottingham.
He said: “I told him I had written a 20,000-word booklet on how to get a job when you’ve no qualifications.
“He said he would like to read it so I sent him a copy and had hoped that he was going to take my ideas rather than the stupid ones he has been acting on.”
As a management consultant, Duncan worked for different companies and specialised in industrial relations as well as becoming a handwriting expert travelling all over the world.
Since moving back to Scotland, he has joined the continuing fight for independence for Scotland.
He said: “I joined the SNP because I believe in Scotland’s independence and that we should be separate. I have learned that the corruption down south in tremendous.”
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