River of Fire by John MacLeod

Author:John MacLeod
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Birlinn
Published: 2011-08-21T21:00:00+00:00

8

‘A PICTURE OF HEART-RENDING TRAGEDY …’

He was John Bowman; he was a young soldier from Clydebank, and he had – this mid-March weekend in 1941 – just won 10 days’ leave from his battalion of the Cameronian regiment, stationed in a sleepy village in Suffolk. ‘There had been reports down south claiming slight enemy activity over Clydeside,’ Bowman would tell Donna White and Lynn McPherson of the Sunday Mail in 2001, ‘but they said casualties were few. So I thought little of it, until I arrived in my home town.’ The young serviceman, though, rapidly grasped things were very, very wrong – the reek of smoke, and worse; the rubble; the shrapnel holes in walls; a bomb-crater here, collapsed tenements there.

In March 2011, John Bowman again described his homecoming to viewers of BBC Scotland. ‘Well, I was quite excited inasmuch as I hadn’t had leave for about four or five months. Thought to myself, “Och, I’ll not tell the folks I’m coming home on leave, I’ll just turn up and give them a surprise.” The only thing that I had read was that there were a few casualties and that was all it said at that particular time.’

By a row of gutted, devastated shops on Kilbowie Road, the now most alarmed young soldier spotted someone he knew. ‘So I shouted out through the shop, because the windows had got blown out, said, “Bobby, what’s happening here? What is it?” He said, “John, don’t, whatever you do, go up to where you lived.” He says, “Your house has been destroyed and all your family are dead.” Where I actually lived [10 Church Street] – there were four long terraces and they were all … gone.’

Bewildered, John Bowman made his way to Clydebank Town Hall, where a strained woman confirmed the news. ‘She says, “I’m sorry, John, but your mother’s dead, your two brothers Archie and Albert are dead, your sister Hannah’s dead.” Things were just going from bad to worse.’ Shortly came the worst – formally identifying his kin, in a makeshift mortuary.

And I walked inside and I was not prepared for what I saw. There must have been over a hundred – things; it was all you could call them – things stretched out, up and down, all along in rows on the floor. They was … They were actually corpses. No arms. No legs. Badly burnt. You just couldnae recognise anything. So I walked out the church hall and, lo and behold, walked straight into my father. He says, ‘Who sent for you?’ I says, ‘Nobody sent for me. I’ve been given leave and I thought I’d come and surprise you all.’

His father was limping badly after a dreadful ordeal, and brokenly explained things. As the sirens wailed, Mrs Bowman had hurried into a communal shelter with friends and family: in all, nine adults and four children. It had been hit. The children, though injured, survived; all the grown-ups had been killed. One of John’s sisters, who had thought it looked too crowded, had taken cover in another one – and survived.

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