Introduction

In 1984, Leslie Boumphrey wrote an article called “Evacuated to Killin” which was published in the Killin News.  His article explained how he and his younger sister were evacuated from Glasgow in April 1941, shortly after the devastating “Clydesdale Blitz” on the 13^th and 14^th of March 1941, and he went on to describe the enjoyable life he had for approximately the next 15 months in Killin.

His daughter, Jackie Heath, has an edited copy of the article, but not the published original and unfortunately, despite further investigations, a copy of the original article has not been found. 

The edited version, “Killin, Memories of an Evacuee” still paints a lively picture of the life of a 12 year old evacuee in Killin during the early years of World War II, and so it has been included below.

“Killin, Memories of an Evacuee”

Smells are nostalgic.  Woodsmoke, coming from houses, always reminds me of Killin. That smell was the village’s herald as I opened the window of the funny, little, single carriage train from Killin Junction.

Most children were evacuated at the beginning of the War; we went from Glasgow to Rothesay on the 3^rd  September 1939, but we were back home again in December because nothing seemed to be happening.  All was fairly safe until the “Clydesdale Blitz” on the 13^th  and 14^th  March 1941, which was so terrifying that my parents made plans to send my sister and me to a less dangerous place.  The mother of our neighbour, Donnie Nicholson, lived in Killin, and by early April we were arriving, to that smell of wood smoke, at Millmore, the house of Eck MacPherson and his family on the banks of the river Dochart.  I was twelve, my sister nearly six; we cried ourselves to sleep the first night.

We soon settled down to an exciting life, dominated by three things – the river, the smithy, and school.

The river was dangerous, challenging, beautiful, and noisy; I couldn’t sleep for it at first and couldn’t keep away from it during the day.  The rocks were there to scramble on and jump over; the island had to be reached, but it was inaccessible because of the spate.  I found a friend in Willie Foster and, exploring together, we pioneered a route to within one jump of the island.  It was too far for us to leap, but in the middle of the raging torrent was a rock just below the surface; we watched the water every day until the rock was exposed enough for us to jump using it as a stepping stone; the magic island was ours.

We found a robin’s nest – I could show you the place even now – and one of its eggs was the first of our collection.  We were very careful and did not think any harm would be done in taking just one egg from a nest, but now I’m a little embarrassed at the memory.

Downstream from the island the water became even more turbulent, until the restricting rocks forced it through a narrow gap and it roared down under the bridge into the dark, swirling salmon pool.  Here we spent many hours watching the salmon leaping the falls on their way to the spawning grounds.  We also watched the fishermen; for in the lee of the falls, clear of the boiling water was a fishes’ waiting room where fine trout could be caught.  One day we came upon an army captain there who already had two beautiful trout.  “How long are you staying?” we asked, “Till I’ve got six!”; and he did, all of them looking about three or four pounds.

The most astute fisherman was Mr Wilson, who owned the woollen shop and mill.  He did not fish frequently, but I was told that he was an expert at recognising the right conditions of water and weather, and he seldom came home emptyhanded.  His establishment, on the riverbank, was a working mill but the weaver, Jimmy (I’ve forgotten his surname), was serving in the R.A.F..  When he came home on leave he showed me how to use the spinning wheel and let me have a go on one of the looms – I could just reach the treadles.  The noise, the rhythmic click clack-clack of the shuttles, and the variety of subdued, heathery colours fascinated me.  I was so proud of the small piece of cloth that I wove.

Round the corner from the woollen shop was the smithy, or smiddy, and the smith – Colin Kennedy.  I spent wet days there and knew every detail of shoeing a horse, from selecting the right length of bar to the final pat on the rump.  Colin claimed to be able to tell where a horse had been shod anywhere in the Highlands just by looking at the workmanship.  He was challenged one day by a tinker and identified the shoeing as being by a certain smith in the remote West Highlands; the tinker was amazed.

My six years old sister solemnly announced during a lull in the lunch-time conversation, “The Germans are a lot of buggers.”  Tactfully asked why she thought that, she replied, “The men in the smiddy say so, so it must be true!”  They were the ultimate authority on every subject!

After a few months I think that the MacPhersons must have had enough of us, for we moved to ‘Lyndoch’ in the middle of the village to stay with Mrs MacIntyre and her two daughters, Isa and Alexa.  I remember Miss Alexa best of all; she was my class teacher for the last few months of junior school and my English teacher for the first year of the secondary section.  She made a lasting impression – I remember her grey stockings and MacIntyre tartan skirt, the way she wrinkled her nose, her love of poetry and the countryside; my own teaching of poetry and appreciation of nature owe something to her.  

But Killin School in those days meant Mr MacRaw, the Headmaster – old Jake to us and all the village.  He taught us everything except English, French, and Science; no doubt he was an expert in these too, but the timetable would not allow him to teach everything to everybody.  If you would like a description of Old Jake, read that part about the village schoolmaster in Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village”.  There were three classes in the secondary department, and I was only in the first year, all occasionally being taught together in the same room.

I have been taught and also taught in scores of classrooms in the last forty years, but none has had the chalky, scholarly, homely atmosphere of that room.  Behind the Headmaster’s desk was a large open fire, the only heating in the room, guarded by tall brass railings.  On winter mornings we hung our wet hats and scarves and gloves on the rail, and soon the rising steam became the backcloth to blackboard and easel, chalky dusters, and dusty Latin.  And on winter afternoons the oil lamps were lit.

In the school yard was a shed where we spent morning breaks swinging from rafter to rafter until we could go from end to end and back again without touching the floor, despite the agony.  The bleeding blisters soon hardened into strips of rawhide, and we were seasoned Tarzans.  In the summer we dug ground-nuts out of the knoll behind the school while the opulent went to the sweetshop across the road, where toffees could be bought for a ha’penny each.

The comparative peace of this daily round was broken when a company of Commandos spent a fortnight in the village, some of them billeted in the Drill Hall, learning how to ski. The lower slopes of Sròn a’ Chlachain, the hill behind the village, were used as nursery slopes for the first few days; then they graduated to advanced training on Creag Ghlas.  We were more interested in visiting the soldiers in the evening, to see the weapons and other items of equipment, and to learn how to fill Sten gun magazines.  Some time later, when we heard about the Commando raid on the Lofoten Islands, we felt that we had been part of the preparations.

In the spring of 1942, my father bought me a bike and all the magnificent country within a radius of about twenty miles was explored – round Loch Tay, over Glen Ogle and round Loch Earn (Glen Ogle was harder coming back!), up Glen Lochay, up Glen Dochart to Crianlarich, and shorter rides to Ardeonaig, Auchlyne, and the lanes round about.

Other random memories “flash upon that inward eye” – the sawmill, where I was allowed to operate the chain which opened and closed the gate in the lade, controlling the flow of water to the great water-wheel by which the whole mill was powered; Sunday walks to Finlarig Castle to see primroses or collect beech nuts, which we coloured in school and made into decorations; swimming in the ‘canal’, the shortcut from the Dochart to the loch; catching perch from the Black Bridge over the Lochay; Dochy Johnson, the local tinker, who played the pipes outside the pub on Saturday nights, and who joined the Army just to get the boots, then deserted; the McLaren Hall – S.W.R.I. , scones, pancakes, jam, and touring film shows attended by the whole village; the salmon, a twenty-one pounder, first of the season, bent like an ox-bow lake, being carried up the street on a January evening; our initials carved high on a sycamore on the railway embankment just by the bridge over the Dochart, with the initials V…. so that future archaeologists could identify the precise period.

All this lasted a very short time, and by the late summer of 1942, when bombing seemed to have eased off and my parents thought that going to Queen’s Park School was more important than enjoying myself, I was back in Glasgow.  But mine was a happy War during that time in Killin, and the smell of wood-smoke never fails to raise a memory.

Leslie Boumphrey,  1984

P.S.  If anyone has a copy of the original 1984 article, “Evacuated to Killin”,  published in the Killin News, please contact us at bhsaberfeldy@gmail.com, as this would be of great interest to Jackie, Leslie’s daughter.