Voices of the refugees

‘There was people waiting, families waiting to be evacuated…’

‘I’m not sure how long we were away, although the house was damaged it was habitable…so we were in the back room with the windows boarded up because all the glass in the house was shattered, the blast had blown out all the windows…It was quite cosy. We had to cook on the fire.’

‘I stood outside the burnt shell of what was my home with my children, all we had was what we stood in… how lucky I was.’

‘We set off… a bus had driven into a bomb crater so deep that only its roof was visible.’

‘We were laid out on the floor of the foyer where there already a number of injured people.’

‘Bombs were falling. They were coming through the roof and one came right beside us hitting my mother on the right foot and burnt her leg. Father pulled my mother out of the hall. I jumped over the bomb. Father lifted the baby out…kicking the bomb downstairs…’

‘From under the old deal-table we crawled. Over the shambles we climbed, out to the street.’

‘It was another night of hellish noise and fire.’

‘The shelters were lost and we could not see.’

These refugees are not Syrians, where about half the population has moved out of the country. Out of the war zone. These refugees are the people of Clydebank. Bombed by the Luftwaffe seventy-five years ago. Some of them got as far as Kirkintilloch. The sensible thing would have been to have rounded them up and kept them waiting in camps. Their children and their children’s children. That would have taught them a valuable lesson. We have not forgotten.