Today’s article comes from Dr Donald Adamson and tells a story about 1944 in Rosyth, US troops on their last period of leave before Normandy, dancing and fortune telling.
It had been a hard night shift in the dockyard. Douglas Thomson had been working all night on a repair to a boom guarding the approaches to Rosyth Royal Naval Dockyard. Specifically, it was a small section in the boom running between Inchcolm and Cramond Island. This was just one of the Forth defences which extended from Inchgarvie, on which the Forth Railway Bridge was built, for more than thirty miles east to the Isle of May at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. The defences comprised anti-submarine nets, booms, and anti-torpedo baffles, all covered by a complex series of 6-inch guns and command posts on half a dozen islands and the north and south coasts of the Forth estuary. This section had rusted away after four years, to the point that the heavy cable at the water’s surface had lost many of its heavy, sharp metal spikes. The cable and its spikes were being renewed.
It was six o’clock in the morning, and the sun was beginning to rise. It was a pleasant day. Douglas Thomson walked home with a coat over his overalls and a canvas bag on his shoulder. He wore his favourite silver-grey floppy cloth cap from Nicol’s of Dunfermline. Thankfully, Douglas was moving to a day shift pattern tomorrow, allowing him to resume his part-time work as an air raid warden. He had been doing this when his shafts allowed since before the war started.
Sarah Thomson, aged 84, Lochgelly
Now, he could get home and have breakfast with his wife and daughter (who worked with the Admiralty in Edinburgh) and his elderly mother, who had come to stay for a few weeks. Sarah Thomson was beginning to show the first signs of memory loss. Eccentricity and forgetfulness were growing into something more concerning. Normally, Sarah lived with Douglas’ oldest sister in Lochore and sometimes with his youngest sister, Laura, in Kirkcaldy. However, he and his wife liked to ‘take their share’, so Sarah shared the back bedroom with his nineteen-year-old daughter Sheila.
He turned the corner from King’s Crescent into King’s Place. Home was only thirty yards away. He arrived at his gate. 53 King’s Place was one of four apartments in a block. It was the upper left flat as it faced the road. The front door faced the road, whilst the downstairs flat had a door on the side of the block. The front door led to a flight of stairs, which turned on a small landing. The passageway was divided into two bedrooms. Beyond was a bathroom on the street side. The living room and a dining kitchen were at the head of the passageway.
On the wide pathway leading to the two front doors, concealed until the last moment by a beech hedge, were four American soldiers with kit bags. They were asleep on the ground, with their coats over them. Dawn was breaking.
Douglas looked at the one closest to the front door. He had his head on the step.
“Bill, whatever are you doing here? I hope you’ve not been sleeping outside all night. It’s too cold in April to be sleeping out in the open in Scotland.”
Bill Manning of Ellwood City, Pennsylvania (right)
“Good morning, Mr Thomson. My buddies and I got a few days' leave at the last moment. I hope you don’t mind, but we had nowhere to go but here. We came up from Malvern overnight by train and then got a lift in a truck going to the dockyard. From there, we walked down, but it was only five o’clock, so we didn’t want to wake the house. So we just bedded down for an hour or so.”
Douglas looked down as the four young Americans fully awoke from their slumbers and began to stretch.
“Time for breakfast, young men. You’re all very welcome. We’ve got plenty of bread, jam, and eggs, but the bacon will be in short supply. There’s a war on, you know!”
LATER THAT DAY
Eight people had finished a Scottish High Tea, which, because of wartime rationing, was long on vegetables and plain baking and short on meat and anything sweet. Sarah Thomson, at eighty-five years old, held court. She was reading the tea leaves.
“Grandma,” said nineteen-year-old Sheila Thomson, “please don’t hold the boys up. Doll will be round shortly, and we’ve arranged to meet Betty and Ruby, the Wrens, at Rosyth Halt. We’re going dancing, and it starts early to fit in with the dockyard shifts.”
Sheila Thomson of Rosyth, Aged 19, 1944
Sarah looked up sharply. “There will be time enough for frivolities once the leaves have been read. Bill, you know how it goes. Can you give your cup a small swill with the last of the tea, and I’ll check where things lie?”
The Noritake china cup was duly handed over. Inside, an island and several streaks of tea leaves waited for Sarah’s attention. She looked at it thoughtfully, smiled to herself, and looked Bill in the face.
“Bill Manning. I am glad to say that not much has changed since you visited us at Christmas. A girl is waiting for you in Pennsylvania. She just does not know it yet. You’ll get home alright, and I see children in your future. Who is next?”
The next two cups were duly read, and predictable and comforting futures were foretold. But the last one was different. A frown crossed Sarah’s face. She looked a second time and frowned more. Then she announced, “Sometimes I cannot see, and I am afraid this is cloudy. I want to say….”
Sheila interrupted, “Grandma, you are getting tired. It has been lovely, but perhaps the boys want to go and use the bathroom to freshen up. Wouldn’t that be a good idea?”
On that somewhat truncated note, Sarah Jerman Thomson stood up, looked thoughtfully at the company, and said, “I think I have a headache coming on. If you’ll excuse me, I tire easily and think it is time for a lie-down.”
Notes.
1. Sarah Thomson’s youngest son, Douglas, worked at H.M. Dockyard, Rosyth from 1937 to his retirement in 1962, aged 65. He was one of the first engineers taken back onto the strength when the yard re-opened after being mothballed for 12 years. He was an air raid warden as well as an engineering charge hand, working on the creation and maintenance of the boom defences. In the late 1920s and early 1930’s, he lived in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh. He was forced to return to Scotland after his employer shut down in the Depression of the 1930s.
Her eldest son, Edward (Ted), had been the valet to Lord Rothermere, Chairman of Clan Lines and President of the British Chamber of Shipping in WWII. Ted owned a small private hotel in Sidmouth on the south coast of Devon.
Her second son, James (Jimmy), was in Portland, Oregon, where he was an electrical engineer. His two sons, born in Scotland, fought for the United States in the war.
Norman Thomson, a United States Marine, was captured at Corregidor, Philippines when it fell to the Japanese in 1942. He died in a Japanese POW Camp in 1944.
Her eldest daughter Helen (Nell) lived in Lochore, where her husband was the foreman baker for the Co-operative. Her only son, Douglas Dick, served in the RAF and was in India and Burma in 1944.
Her youngest daughter, Laura, was married and living in Kirkcaldy, where her husband worked in the coal mines. Her eldest son, Bobby Walker, was killed in Italy in 1943 whilst with the Reconnaissance Regiment. Her second son, Eddie, drove the trains that kept the country running, often through the night, to avoid enemy bombing. Her third son, Jack, was in the RAF, based in England.
2. Bill Manning was born in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, in 1922. He was the son of William D. Manning and his wife Lois. Bill had two sisters, Marie and Rita. W.D. and Lois were neighbours and friends of Douglas and Joan Thomson in Ellwood.
Bill interrupted his college education to serve as a hospital medic in the U.S. Army during WWII. He treated the wounded on D-Day aboard a hospital ship that was under fire in the English Channel.
After the war, he returned to Ellwood City, where he worked in engineering. He married Betty Gerlach, and they had a daughter and a son. He died in November 2019 at the age of 97.
Bill made several trips on leave to Rosyth in the war. We have photographs of him in winter snow in Pittencrieff Park Dunfermline. We also have a picture of him and a comrade in England in uniform. On the back, it is labelled Malvern, England. In addition, we have wartime photographs from Ellwood, as well as a large number from 1945 to 1985.
My parents, John and Sheila Adamson, stayed with Bill and his wife in Ellwood in the early 1980s. Bill and his wife, his son, daughter-in-law and young grandson visited the U.K. in 1987 and stayed with my folks.