George M Mitchell continues his series recalling childhood memories from during the war.

A NOTABLE wartime event in the life of many households was the arrival of evacuees. Early on after the start of the Second World War, a system was put in place whereby lots of children were identified as being at serious risk of being injured or killed by enemy bombing. This in the first instance took hold in London, but as hostilities spread, children from more at-risk areas were included and large numbers were moved out to country addresses where they would be much less likely to suffer harm.

One day, a couple of adults accompanied by two or three children were seen crossing the field to our farmhouse. If my parents knew that they were coming, they certainly hadn’t told me. Anyway, that was the arrival of evacuee children from somewhere in Glasgow. I think that this was around the time of the Clydebank bombing. I am afraid that I am unable to recall their names or anything about them except that the whole exercise was a dismal failure.

They were totally detached from any type of life they had previously known, totally miserable and wouldn’t eat anything. Where is the nearest chip shop, was the only question which I remember. After three days or so of utter failure of the attempt to relocate them, my father had to walk the round trip of about three miles to telephone the organisers to have them taken away again. It was a good idea which proved unworkable on a human level.

A further unusual postscript to the local evacuee situation would surface many years later, in around 2006. One day I encountered a gentleman, Philip Barker-Brown from Worcester, accompanied by his wife. They were searching Sheriffmuir for Lairhills House, now demolished. His story was that he, accompanied by his older sister, had been placed there as evacuee children some time around 1944.

The surprising thing was that they had been brought from Kent, just south of London, at such a late stage of the war, but also the people with whom they were billeted, the

Carruthers family, spoke no English, only Gaelic.

A few years earlier, I had accompanied my father to the livestock market at Stirling. Just across from the market there was the Regal cinema, which had a large car park. I remember being lifted up on to the parapet of this so that I could look down upon a German aeroplane which had been brought there to await onward transportation to wherever such things were examined.

That reminds me of the special vehicles which could be seen passing through the village. These would be halted at the level crossing and we could get a real look at them. They were called Queen Marys and were very long, with low side rails, and were designed for the collection of crashed or shot down aircraft. Once the wings had been removed, both the fuselage and the wings would be stowed aboard and it would be away on its final journey.

Another plane which failed to complete its mission was an RAF plane, which one day crashed high up on West Biggs farm, killing the pilot. A posse had to be formed from the local shepherds to extricate the body of the pilot and stretcher him down to the road. No-one was ever told who he was or on what mission he had been engaged. Years later I was told of an elderly resident in Edinburgh, a Mr Cuthbertson, whose son had been killed in a crash on the Ochil Hills. The authorities had steadfastly refused to give him any information surrounding the event. Was this the same event?

In 1942, my father, following the general instructions to the farming community to increase food production, bought a batch of Blackface ewes at the Stirling market, the one opposite where the German plane had been, to increase his breeding stock. These were then dispatched by the auctioneers by rail to the local station at Blackford. He had been told when they would arrive, so that once we were home, we had then to set out on foot, father and I plus the trusty sheepdog, collect the sheep from the large wagon at the station and then walk them up the main village street and onwards for the three-mile journey, partly on the A9, to their new home. They were very different times indeed.

Another vivid memory is of getting home from school one dismal afternoon and finding no-one home. This was unusual and, aged around six, a bit frightening. Eventually all would be well; my father had to collect a load of turnips for cattle feed from a distant field and mother had gone to help him before the light faded. The most frightening thing for a small boy was, however, going across fields searching for them. A great noise got up, the sky grew dark and was filled with a huge fleet of bombers flying east. There seemed to be hundreds of them and, to a small boy, it was very scary. He lay flat down on the ground until they had all gone!

READ MORE: George G Mitchell: Life During Wartime: Nissen huts, Humbers and a very fast Packard

IN 1943 the construction of what would later be named the Atlantic Wall took place. This was created on the land at Harperstone Farm – where the shepherd was the Mr Carruthers of whom we have just heard. There had recently been an allied raid on the French coast at Dieppe; this is generally referred to as a failure, insofar as a large number of army personnel, mostly Canadians, had been lost. Another reason of the raid which was not reported had been to get accurate details of the concrete defences which surrounded the French coast. So was built the Atlantic Wall, a replica of these defences which could be used for training purposes in advance of the D-Day landings.

As a small boy I had several sightings of this. Traffic over the road was discouraged, but those of us who lived there had to be tholed by the authorities. Passing by during the construction period in the back of father’s car during school holiday periods, it was possible to see huts being erected, big chunks of concrete rising out of the heather and, most surprising, a railway line created across the hillside. Fifty years on, circumstances would conspire to let me meet one of the army engineers who took part in the construction of it all. He was Bill Hudson, a Sapper of 757 Field Company Royal Engineers. He later wrote down some of his memories for me and I will quote some of them here.

Fifty years after the work had been carried out for the creation of the Atlantic Wall, I was contacted by a member of staff at the Dunblane library asking if I could help. They had been contacted by someone who was searching for the site, and could I help? The outcome was my eventual meeting with the late Bill Hudson.

In 1993 he would travel up from Tyneside and I would take him on a tour of the site which he had last seen in 1943. He was unsure of the location because the soldiers creating it were shipped in each day in covered wagons, and anyway all signposts had at that time been removed.

He recalled: “The 757 Field Company Royal Engineers arrived at the Dunblane and Blackford areas on July 3, 1943. Their objective was to construct a replica of the Dieppe beach fortifications. The site was selected about one and a half miles east of the Sheriffmuir Inn on the road to Greenloaning. The entrance, on the north side of the road, was about 500 yards east of the site, and here a cabin 15 feet by eight feet was constructed at each side of the entrance, one for cement and the other for tools and equipment.

“A miniature railway was constructed from the gate to the far end of the site, about 1000 yards in all. The track itself consisted of six-feet sections which assembled like Meccano. The locomotive was petrol driven, six feet long and two tons in weight, with an open cabin. The wagons were on four-wheeled cradles and could be tipped to either side of the track. As well as the wall, construction took place of an underground gun emplacement with two turrets to take machine guns, and a concrete pillbox, both of German design. The wall was intended to be 150 yards long by 10 feet high and eight feet thick, but owing to a shortage of material and time, the length was sustained but the thickness reduced at the right end. At the base of the wall, in the centre, can be seen a hole for a machine gunner to lie.

“Barbed wire fencing was constructed all along the entire frontage, live mines were buried in front of the wire, and all finished with pebbles to represent the beach. The engineers left Dunblane on October 7, 1943 – moved on to take further part in the war effort.”

AFTER that, constant shelling and attacks would take place on the installation in order to ascertain exactly what kind of weaponry would be needed for the eventual re-entry of allied forces into Northern Europe.

By the time that the war was into its closing phases, the small boy had grown somewhat bigger and had been “promoted” to being one of the pair of pupils whose job it was to cross to the station each forenoon and collect the crate of milk bottles which was provided free as a government addition to help children’s health.

Just as wartime was finishing, a new headmaster arrived at the school. His name was David Eton Young. He told us many tales of his wartime experiences in the Home Guard and was well liked by the pupils.

Sadly, not all the parents shared our enthusiasm.