'In what street?'

This is one of the saddest pictures I know of the aftermath of the Clydebank Blitz. I've put it here because Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the 13th and 14th March, will be the 72nd anniversary of the devastating bombing of Clydebank, the Clydebank Blitz. To mark this I’d like to talk about the numbers because since last year’s anniversary I have discovered the source of those figures and the date. I was appalled, I have to admit, but subsequently greatly and sadly mystified.

The bombing shook Clydebank on a Thursday and a Friday. On the Sunday the authorities reported 528 dead, stating that there was ‘probably a further 200’. Another 617 were said to have been seriously injured. This report was not made public at the time but these numbers were published the following year by the Sunday Post and the Sunday Mail. This was of course illegal because of war-time censorship and I believe the two papers got their knuckles rapped for their trouble.

The people of Clydebank are said to have been appalled by these numbers too. An ARP warden, who had been part of the rescue operation, is noted to have remarked on hearing the figures, ‘In what street?’ Eye-witness accounts confirm a far higher scale of damage and the sheer ratio of bombs and bombers to houses and people suggests the numbers were far higher: over 4,000 bombs for 12,000 dwellings. This is one bomb for every three houses. There were somewhere between 55,000 and 60,000 people living there, the population having swelled by 10 to 15 thousand because of the availability of war work.

But they don’t know.

And in a way that’s the point. Everybody scarpered after the first night, those who could, those who weren’t part of the rescue operation. And they took some time to come back, those that did. Nobody was there to point out they hadn’t seen Johnnie for a few days, or the guy who’d newly arrived from the other end for the country for work whose name nobody knew. And some areas were just too thoroughly burnt out and flattened.

It’s an ugly competition but Clydebank took more bombs in two nights that poor Coventry had in the entire war. Numbers do actually mean something, and therefore numbers need to be accurate. In some way they validate the experience by confirming that yes, it was that bad, and yes, the chances of escape from certain areas were extremely slim. This is standard post-trauma healing, trying to put together a picture of what happened so you can understand it, deal with it and keep living.

So they don’t know the real numbers. And this is what mystifies me: why put out figures at all and why defend them? Why not just say, especially so long after it all happened, awful though it is, “We just don’t know.”

The chapters in Mavis’s Shoe which cover the actual bombing and the day in between, were derived in part from accounts written by people who had actually lived through this terrifying experience. They also reflect reportage of other more recent conflicts, notably Bosnia. The Clydebank accounts are to be found in Untold Stories: Remembering Clydebank in War-time, which was published in March 1999 by the Clydebank Life Stories group. I was honoured to be invited to their annual reunion when Mavis’s Shoe was first published to read a small section of the book to the group.

You could have heard a pin drop. I was relieved and delighted when so many people came to speak to me afterwards and tell me more stories of their survival or that of their parents and relatives, and that what I had written was an accurate reflection of those people’s experiences. These are things we do know about.

For more information about the Clydebank Blitz go to this website.
Untold Stories can be found here.
And the best guide to the background so far can be found here.

What would you do?

I have three treats for you today.

When Mavis's Shoe was at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, I asked the kids who came to imagine what would happen if some bombs came down at just after 9pm that night. I asked them to think specifically about what they would do. And I asked them to write something and send it to me. These are the results.

This was a very difficult task for me because nearly all the pieces were very very good. I therefore chose three winners, first, second and third. Their stories are below. I hope you enjoy them.

1st

The Bombing Begins
by Caitlin Paterson, p.7, Broomhouse Primary

I was in my house with mum and dad. I was in my room sitting on my giant bed texting my best friend. I was feeling fantastic, happy, cheerful and great. I never saw my best friend for a year and she was coming back to visit for a week. I was excited to see her.

She was coming to my house to visit. She reached the doorstep and the ground started to shake madly. I told her to come in. We looked out the window there were bomber planes
everywhere and me, mum, dad and Sarah ran outside to the bomb shelter. Just when we got in the bomb shelter, the bombs started going off. I smelt the disgraceful smoke and heard loud crashing sounds we could smell the burning metal. We were petrified.

My mum and dad ran out of the shelter and then I went out to look for them. I could not find them. I looked everywhere for them. I tried shouting “Mum! Dad! Where are you? You need to comeback!”
I saw them walking.
Cabang !
A bomb went straight through them. My eyes filled with tears and the street was filled with flames.

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2nd

World War
by Ali Eltom, P7, Broomhouse Primary
“Oh no,” I said to my friend Lewis. He was beating me at my own video games again. We were playing Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 3. All of a sudden I heard a giant roar in the sky but I ignored it…

Bombs started falling. People were screaming. Men were shouting “Someone help my family”. The only thing going through my mind was “What’s going on out there?” I ran to my window and could hear the rubber of my shoes thudding on the ground with humungous bangs. Me and Lewis ran outside and explored. I worriedly walked across the street. My brain was filled with different emotions, fear, anger and worry.

I thought I should go looking for my mum. Lewis asked “How are you going to find her with all this bombing?” I ignored him. We were walking and I heard a faint scream. I ran to see what was happening. I saw my mum sitting there she never opened her eyes I thought she was dead. I screamed “Wake up, Mum, wake up !!!!!!!” People in military suits came and took me away. I was screaming and shouting. They stuck a needle into my skin and I fell asleep.

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3rd

Bombing in Denny
by Brandon Wilson, 15, Hillside School

One morning I woke up in a nice, wet and windy Scottish summers day. I went down the stairs to the kitchen to make a greasy squared sausage roll with fried onions and a bit of HP brown sauce. After finishing my breakfast I headed to catch the post office at 9am to get my mum’s money for the tea that night.

I took my dog Lehgend. He is a German Shepherd, only 7 months old. I was walking casually down to the town. I was only two minutes from the post office and my dog was going mad. He was barking, jumping, and staring up into the sky. The sky was still and very grey. I shouted, “Shut up” to my dog, and suddenly I heard in the distance a roar of engines. All around me there was a deathly silence.

The Post Office shutters went down and everyone ran for shelter. All of a sudden these planes were surrounding the buildings in the town centre. Bang, crash - the sound of concrete and glass smashing and falling all over them. I heard the screams of panic. Children crying. Dogs barking. Everyone ran for their lives, with their hands over their heads. Fear on their faces, as they saw the flashing lights in the sky. The smoke and dust was up into my nose, burning and choking me and the people around me. All I felt was dust, tiny, sharp bits of debris. Suddenly, all I heard again was silence. The buildings stopped moving. All I could hear now were sobs and crying and dogs whimpering. People were helping each other to safety.
I started to make my way back to my family to see if they were safe and well. But I struggled to find my way back home because all the paths and roads had burned out cars. It was all smokey in the air around the streets. Finally, me and my dog were back in my house. My family were glad to see us. They thought I was hurt, but I only had a cut arm and a bruised leg. My house was not too badly damage but next door’s had crumbled down. It was just a big pile of rubble. We were extremely lucky that we were not hurt and our house was still standing. We all sat down and stood in the one room, waiting for everything to blow over (said my mum).

Champagne Moment!

Mavis’s Shoe has been bought by Bertrand Brasil of, er, Brazil. I don’t like to change a country’s own spelling of itself but it seems to be the way with Brazil. Mavis’s Shoe is to be translated into Portuguese. This, by the reckoning of an online translator, would be into Brazilian Portuguese and would make it ‘O Sapato do Mavis’. To my Scottish ear this sounds kind of cute, or am I just excited at the prospect of Mavis crossing the Atlantic? This is something I have never done myself. I would of course be very pleased to follow in Mavis’s Shoe’s footsteps (if that’s not confusing metaphors and idioms and such-like) and indeed, my friend Isa MacKenzie who lived through the Clydebank Blitz informed me tonight that she travelled to Brazil with her husband a couple of decades after the war on a mission for Singers sewing machine factory. Meanwhile my own beloved is being persuaded to travel to Brazil for work and the first song I heard after getting the news was on good old Sunny Govan Radio on their world music programme and was by a Brazilian band whose name I was too excited to remember. Perhaps there is such a thing as synchronicity. Or perhaps Brazil is so much on the up just now that everyone’s talking about it.

Anyway this means Mavis’s Shoe is being launched on ‘South America’s biggest media market’ so-called by the BBC, but not in the style of an Iraqi in the company of George Bush. I’m hoping that the arrival of Mavis’s Shoe in Brazil is welcomed. Brasil does after all have a population of 196.6 million which is nearly 38 times the population of Scotland and the tune of its national anthem, although not particularly carnival is suitably jubilant. I know this because I have been playing it all morning and you can too by going here.

But what is really exciting is the translation of Mavis’s Shoe into another language and perhaps another culture. Will Lenny be given the voice of a girl in the favelas of São Paulo? What will readers who don’t know anything about Scotland never mind Clydebank or the blitz or even WW2 in Europe, make of it? Will I ever know even a fraction of what they think when I don’t speak any Portuguese? Is it time finally to learn?

A couple of weeks ago I participated in an event run by the Scottish Writers Centre at the CCA in Glasgow. Our subject was the languages of Scotland and with me on the panel were Alan Riach of Glasgow University, Catriona Lexy Campbell a Gaelic writer and translator and Kusay Hussain, my Iraqi co-writer (who always keeps his shoes when not at home) (see previous post) and we were chaired by Leela Soma, another writer. In researching for my input, I found the following statistic: In France 15.9% of new books are translated from another language. 60% of these are from English. I found no figures for Scotland but in the UK only 3% of our new books are translated. I found no figures for Brazil either. Pause for thought. Are we being insular on this ‘island’ of ours?

Meanwhile I have been congratulated on Mavis’s Shoe’s latest success by lots of kind people. Martin Stepek said, ‘Muito bem!’ which means ‘very good’ or ‘well done’. And Craig Munro said, ‘Está uma mulher,’ which means ‘Yer some woman.’

To which I reply, ‘Obrigado!’

Mavis's Videos

Today is the 71st anniversary of the Clydebank Blitz. In fact as I sit here just after seven in the evening the sirens would perhaps already have gone off and people would be more of less ignoring them because for some reason few people thought Clydebank would be a target. This always strikes me as very odd given the quantity of war industry going on in Clydebank at the time. But I suppose it was a long time coming.

So today I have been thinking again about what people went through and about the people I have met and spoken to for my research and so on and how they may be feeling today. I am particularly sad because of Syria because what is going on out there is something very similar.

However, this evening I also stumbled upon a video of an interview I did for the Scottish Book Trust last year and another of me reading an extract from Mavis's Shoe. You can find them both at this link.

Past the First Post

Mavis's Shoe was published in March this year by Waverley Books and is a novel about the Clydebank Blitz as seen through the eyes of young girl. It's about what war is really like, what it means to be going about your business when suddenly bombs come raining down all around you. And it's about the importance of family and community and belonging. I love this book and I loved writing it. I hope everyone who reads it loves it too.

The story is, well, a story, but the background is all historically accurate right down to where the bombs dropped, and after the bombing it goes to one of my favourite places, Carbeth, which is a hut community not far from Clydebank where a lot of people ended up after being bombed out. Carbeth has a great story to tell too, but that's for another blog. I wrote the book so I could keep going to Carbeth. That's not true, by the way. But it's not far off it.

Here's the beginning of Mavis's Shoe:
'For those of you that don't know, this is my story of the bombing. There was trouble before it even started.'