gb0551ms-33-106

Transcription

[Page] 106
[continued from page 105]

in the town. We were coming to the end of the
9 o'clock news bulletin at 9.15, when the sirens
sounded. As we had had alertes of very short
duration on each of the previous days, which I
presumed were reconnaissance, and as there
was much shipping in Leith Roads, I feared we
might be in for some bombing. Exactly at 9.30
firing commenced. I went into the hall and
found Catherine and Maud, (our new highland
maid), seated in the recess by the cellar door, and
to keep their courage up I joined the party,
reading my 'Times' beneath the single lamp
suspended nearby. As we never imagined the
raid was going to be of longer duration than
those we have frequently had, we never got out
comfortable chairs or cushions, nor did we have
rugs till later, when I procured them from the
big chest in the dining room. From 9.30 onwards
guns of various calibres all around crashed
and banged, sometimes near, sometimes far
away, and looking out of one of the windows
to the North across the Forth, I could see the
reflection of continuous fire at one time, but
so far away that the sound was inaudible
We could hear the bomber planes distinctly,
approaching from the west, somewhere

above us, and then after a few seconds the guns at
Pilton open fire on them. At times we thought
we heard bombs exploding, but in the turmoil
of anti-aircraft barrage there are many sounds
strange to our ears, which are not bombs, for
when we imagine the bomb has fallen in the
night, in the morning there is nothing.
So it went on all through the night;
with occasional pauses of never much more
than half an hour. Then at last at 5.30 A.M.
the 'all clear' sounded, After nine hours!
I expected to learn of much damage in Edinburgh,
but on making enquiries in the Club, where I
had gone for lunch, I learned that only in
Leith had bombs been dropped, and that
there the damage was not serious. Sir Hog of
Newliston told me that 56 panes of glass were
broken in his house, and that there is not a
pane of glass in the village of Winchburgh.
I was told that a number of incendiary bombs
had landed on Barnton Golf Course, evidently
intended for the Turnhouse aerodrome. There
was said to be a bomb near Dundas,
Genl. [General] Weston told me that he had just been
to Greenlaw where four of his young soldiers
had been killed & 7 injured by the collapse of a house
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