We got a house in Port Glasgow, but there were mice - they even chewed my brother's handkerchiefs. My sister tried to sort out all her clothes. When we went to our house to get some of the stuff, it was away. We saved the gramophone, it was a great big one, walnut - and lovely records - my brother was fond of good music, being a good singer himself. The Pioneer Corps took the gramophone but left the case - helped themselves to it and we didn't know.
"My brother Jim told the minister, "We were sitting at the table and I noticed a piece of music lying at my feet. I knew it wasn't mine or my sister's, so I picked it up and on one side was the music for the "Lord's Prayer" and on the other side "The Lord's My Shepherd.---And he said 'Imagine after coming through that hell on earth, me finding that." The house was destroyed but a bit of it was standing and on the apex of the house was a pure white dove. People down the road had pigeons, but we never heard of them having doves.

May Clark

Memories

"We lost our home in the Greenock Blitz. We had our own house in Bawhirley Road and lost it completely. We were under the stair. My brother Jack worked in Kincaid's. He was too old for the army, he was in the Home Guard. He was a captain with Major Birkmyre. It was Woodhall they were in on the first night of the Blitz and there was looting. Jack and Major Birkmyre were armed with bayonets. "I remember I was up on top of a coal lorry and we arrived up at the farm in Kilmacolm. I had on my good coat and a black and white dust cap. Maybe it had been blown about and I put it on my head rather than go without a hat. Jack said, "And where did you get this fancy hat?" The farmer said all he could give us was the barn to sleep in. We still heard the planes going overhead, they
might have been our own, we didn't know. But even to hear the sound, Oh, I'll never forget it. "We were in the press under the stair. There was the kitchen door, the sitting room door and the lumber press door,
which we always made for because it was under the stair. We were supposed to go to the shelter next door.
The first night, Greenock's air-raid siren was struck by the Germans and there was no sirens sounded the second night, therefore the things were dropping before we'd time to get into the shelter in the garden next door, so we never got the length and the press was the only thing we could think of. There were fourteen people killed at the foot of the garden but the first body we got when we came out of our own house was Mr.
Liddell, who'd been my first boss when I started work at the Cooperative office. His son's shelter was supposed to be the strongest in Greenock but it had been blitzed.Fourteen of the different relatives of the Olivers went into the
shelters and not one of them survived. I was told it was one of the deepest craters in Scotland - forty-two feet deep.
"The back door of another house was blown off and you could see condensed milk and sugar down the hole where Mrs. Craighead had been saving it in her press, for the shortage of it. The help maids got into the house to see if they could find anything at all to eat. We knew where the kitchen had been situated. Under all this stuff, the first thing that I found was a lovely big wooden bowl that my father had made - he was a joiner
who did beautiful wood carvings - thirteen eggs init and not one of them was cracked! Then I handed out butter that  was all full of plaster and bread. The Craigheads had nothing.

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