Scotland How We Won the War

September 3rd, 1939,

and families all over the country flock to their radios.

'I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received,

'and that consequently this country is at war with Germany.'

In that brief moment, life in our country changed for ever.

World War II had begun,

but victory wouldn't be assured by military might alone.

The Blitz, evacuation, rationing, the loss of loved ones.

The war on the home front meant everyone had to do their bit.

From the country's women who took on everything farming,

factory work, even flying Spitfires - to the nation's auxiliary firemen

who worked through the terror of countless air raids.

This is the story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

This is How We Won The War.

'For the next two weeks I'll be roaming across the country,

'exploring how individuals, communities

'and in some cases whole cities made unique contributions

'to the war effort here at home.'

'I'll be looking at the lives of ordinary citizens

'and the incredible efforts they went to throughout the war years.'

'Today I've travelled across the Irish Sea.'

'My journey will see me cross Scotland

'before finally finishing up in Edinburgh.'

'On today's programme, I'll be getting stuck into the homemade grub

'that kept Britain going throughout the war....'

That's gone down well.

OK, that's carrot fudge.

'..discovering the incredible dangers faced by women working

'in Scotland's secretive shadow factories...'

If you had to leave your house every day to come up here and work

with dynamite, to do that day in and day out, deserves some recognition.

'..and exploring how boys as young as 14 gave their lives

'to help our merchant navy win the supply battle.'

I mean, to go and do that at 14, demanded, needed a lot of courage.

In many ways, the war came to Scotland first.

Throughout the end of 1939 and the first half of 1940,

Britain was engaged in what became known as the Phoney War.

A kind of uneasy waiting game.

But not in Scotland.

Here, they were on the front line from the beginning.

AIR RAID SIREN BLARES

On the 26th September, 1939, a Luftwaffe aircraft over Scapa Flow

became the first to be shot down in operations against the British.

Three weeks later,

the first bomb to be dropped on UK soil landed in a field in Orkney.

And that was just the start of it.

Scotland was a centre of invaluable industry and ship-building

and as the war went on, its people paid a price for that role.

During the Clydebank Blitz of March 13th and 14th 1941,

more than 500 civilians were killed.

By the second night of the Blitz, 35,000 were homeless.

Throughout the war, the skies over Scotland

were full of German planes carrying their deadly payloads,

but none of them carried a cargo quite as significant as that which

crashed outside the tiny village of Eaglesham back in May 1941.

Just 15 miles from Glasgow, the village was unknown before the war.

Right here, we go, in here. Floors Farm.

Now, I'm looking for a man called Bill...

..in a field.

Can't be that hard.

Bill!

Hello, Jules. Welcome to Eaglesham!

Nice to see you sir, good to see you!

Well, it's not a bad day is it, really?

'I've met local historian Bill Niven

'to hear how one of the most mysterious moments of World War II

'unfolded in this ordinary-looking field.'

Let me show you a little marker here.

Here we are, this is it!

This little marker here?

This is where the German airman who called himself Captain Alfred Horn

landed around 11 o'clock on the 10th May, 1941.

And the significance of that, of course, is that he wasn't just any

German captain, he was in fact the deputy Reichsfuehrer, Rudolf Hess.

'In the Nazi bible, Mein Kampf, Hitler has nothing but good

'to say of his friend, Rudolf Hess.'

'Unknown to the Fuhrer and even Hess's own wife,

'the leading Nazi had launched a mission to land in Scotland

'while London was being bombed.'

There's all sorts of theories surrounding why he did it,

but what do you think?

Well, I think he had been Hitler's second hand,

second-in-command for many years, and had found in the last two

or three years his influence was slipping,

and he wanted to gain that influence again in Hitler's good books.

He wanted to make contact with the Duke of Hamilton,

who he thought had the ear of the King,

so that some kind of armistice could be drawn up.

A crazy plan, but that was the plan.

What were the events that occurred on this spot?

He was at 6,500ft up there,

he decided to parachute out, but he had never parachuted before,

and of course the wind was keeping him locked in to the plane,

and then he remembered that Billy Messerschmitt,

whose company had built these planes had told him just to turn it

upside down, and you would fall out which is exactly what he did.

What happened then was that in this little cottage here,

Davy McLean, the ploughman, lived with his mother.

He ran out with a pitchfork.

Yes, I'm the man that captured Rudolf Hess.

Little did I realise at the time the important man he turned out to be.

He was a gentleman, for he didn't sit down when I took him in.

Till I told him. And after all, he was somebody's son.

When it became public news that it was Hess,

by the middle of the next week,

then Davy McLean was getting shoals of newspaper reporters

and the BBC and everybody,

and all the world and his wife coming here.

But he was also getting telegrams

from ladies in the States offering him marriage.

So he was seen as a hero?

He was a hero, yes, because he was the man who captured Hess.

Hess's mission failed miserably.

Both the King and Churchill refused to meet him.

Churchill wasn't particularly interested in Hess when he was told.

The Duke of Hamilton was flown down to Ditchley Park

the next day and met Churchill.

It was late in the evening, and Churchill,

he said he'd important news for Churchill,

and Churchill said, "No, just wait a minute,

"I've got something better to do."

"I've got to watch this film 'The Marx Brothers Go West'."

So the cinema took over!

Little did he know he was going to hear about Rudolf Hess going West,

but that's another story!

After a short spell in the Tower of London,

he spent the rest of his life in Berlin's Spandau prison.

Hess landing in a field is just one of the many unusual events

to happen all over the country during the war,

but it was far from Scotland's most important contribution.

As a centre of industry and ship-building,

Scotland had a much more significant role to play.

'Let us refresh ourselves with the realisation of our own strength.

'And let us express that strength now.

'Tonight, tomorrow, every moment,

'until victory is won!

'Work is the call.

'Work, at war speed!

'Goodnight, and go to it.'

I've travelled to an area just outside Dalbeattie

to uncover how one group of Scots

rose to the Minister of Supply's challenge,

producing dangerous and deadly goods.

In 1938, the Government commissioned six secret factories,

to be built in a region known as the 'Back Area' in South West Scotland.

Hidden away in the countryside, out of sight of the enemy,

they produced war-winning explosives on an industrial scale.

The munitions works here in Dalbeattie wasn't of course

the only one in the country, but it is one of the best surviving.

The volatile explosive produced here during the war

made this a hazardous place to work.

Tom Henderson was a ten-year-old local lad at the time,

but party to the site's secret.

No matter where you look here, Tom,

there is another part of this huge plant.

What was it doing here? Why Dalbeattie?

Well, what better place could you pick

than somewhere where nobody knows where it is?

I mean, I don't think half of Scotland know where Dalbeattie is.

But the landscape has been doctored

to accommodate this extraordinary complex.

I mean, looking at this building below us here, in this quarry,

the whole thing just purpose built 70 years ago

for one reason only, and that was munitions.

Munitions.

As war raged across the world, British forces were reliant

on a massive effort here at home to produce the millions of tonnes

of bullets and armaments demanded by the conflict.

Factory hours were long and arduous, and for the mainly female workforce,

handling deadly explosives meant some unusual safety precautions.

They had to strip right down to their bare flesh, virtually,

and then put on clothing without any pins or any metal parts

on their body at all in case of sparks.

And one wee lady was found to have the top of a match

in the bottom of her handbag, and she was suspended,

I think it was for two weeks, for just having that match.

The reason she gave for having that match was she used it

to take the lipstick from within her lipstick holder -

it was so scarce they didn't waste a bit -

and this match was used to lift this lipstick and put it on,

and she must have popped it in her bag, never thinking, and of course

it was sine die to bring a match of any description into the works here.

And we were very fortunate

that there were never any serious blow-ups in this part.

They were so well trained with the safety rules etc.

But if this place had gone up, Tom... Unthinkable, really.

Dalbeattie wouldn't exist. This would be a big pond.

The effects of not just these conditions,

but the materials these women were handling must have had some

profound side effects, if you like.

Oh, they definitely did.

Because the ladies had to pack up sometimes halfway through the day

with dizzy spells, and the smell from the acetone

was going for their lungs and their minds etc.

They were only allowed to work so long and then take a break

and then go back in again.

Margaret Mouat was one of the 2,000 women who worked here.

She remembers the warning she received when she first arrived.

The foreman said to me, "When you go to this bit you'll have a headache,"

and he says, "It'll be a headache like you never had before."

You thought your head was bursting.

To minimise the risk of explosions,

some workers were made to stand in water throughout their working day.

Like, if we put our foot in the factory, in the stile,

it was danger, you were in danger.

Despite the gruelling conditions, the influx of workers and soldiers

needed to staff the factory had a positive effect

on one aspect of life in the small town.

The social life in Dalbeattie didnae half lift!

So it brought a bit of spark, literally!

Oh, it was an absolute godsend to Dalbeattie to the girls there,

I think it put a smile on every girl's face.

We had dances and one thing and another,

and these dances served a purpose.

To go to a dance and enjoy yourself.

People forgot for that small length of time what they were doing.

I couldnae say that I worked at the ammunition factory

and I wasn't happy.

The workers at Dalbeattie risked their lives to keep our troops

supplied with vital munitions and some, like Tom,

believe they deserve more recognition for what they did.

They really deserve a medal.

I mean, if you had to leave your house every day

to come up here and work with dynamite.

To do that day-in, day-out, deserves some recognition

for these people who done that.

As the thousands of women who found themselves in remote factories

like Dalbeattie can testify,

the war on the Home Front was all about change.

I suppose, in some ways, what's more significant

are those moments, those factors that conspired

to change many of the fundamental things about life in this country.

And let's face it, you don't get much more fundamental than food.

At the start of the war, less than a third of all food

consumed in Britain was grown on these shores.

And with Nazi U-boats targeting the cargo ships

carrying goods across the Atlantic,

something had to be done to stop the country starving.

Two solutions came out of Scotland.

'Dig for victory!'

Set up by Aberdeen professor John Raeburn,

Dig for Victory asked everyone to help the war effort

by planting as many crops as they could, wherever they could.

'There may be room for vegetables on top of your Anderson shelter

'or in the back yard, or even on that flat bit of roof.'

By 1943, over a million tonnes of vegetables were grown.

'And for goodness sake, keep your spade clean.'

Another Scotsman, John Boyd-Orr, helped develop one of the most

important social systems of the war - rationing.

Together, these two solutions made food an all-consuming subject

for the people of Great Britain -

something reflected in the Mass Observation diaries.

Set up two years before the war, the project asked hundreds

of members of the public to keep records of their everyday lives,

creating an archive of almost 300,000 pages of personal writings.

Diaries like Pam Ashford's,

a secretary at a Glasgow shipping merchant, offer an insight

into how the war impacted on everyone's life here at home.

'Friday, 20th Feb, 1942.'

'Often I wonder which subject comes first in conversation

'the conscription of women or the food situation.'

'I suppose it depends on how near you are to being conscripted and

'whether you allow that subject to get ahead of food.'

'Today at any rate, food is sweeping forward in a great crescendo

'under the impulse of the release of tinned fruits next Monday.'

'Wednesday, 22nd April, 1942.

'Dried peaches.'

'A tin of Heinz Oxtail Soup lured me into Peacock's this morning,

'and there was a box of dried peaches, not visible from the door.'

'I doubted my eyes so much that I had to ask the assistant what is

'in the box, and you bet he did not take long to produce the pink book.'

'Spotting future moves in bridge or whist is nothing

'to spotting future moves in the game of points.'

'The points system has transformed shopping.'

'It is so nice to see things exposed for sale

'that used to be kept beneath the counter.'

'It is such a fair method of distribution,

'and it is such a thrill.'

Now, of course, these days, we take an abundance of food for granted,

but during the war, and thanks to rationing, people up and down

the country faced a daily battle just trying to keep themselves fed.

Preparing even the most basic of family meals

with the barest of ingredients required great imagination

and often ingenuity, but, of course,

the burning question is, what did it taste like?

'Sadie Dixon-Spain runs the Flying Kitchen, a theatre group

'based on mobile soup kitchens sent to bombed areas during the war.'

'Along with her colleague Alison, they're cooking up some

'wartime favourites for me and some guests.'

-Hello, ladies. How are you?

-Hi, Jules.

-Nice to see you, Sadie.

-And you.

Now, there's an awful lot of myths spoken about wartime cooking

and rationing, some people see it as a golden age

that we should hark back to.

Others, like my mother, never want to go back there again.

Talk us through the wartime diet.

Well, surprisingly, the wartime diet

was actually very, very healthy.

In fact, we know now that Britons

were the healthiest

they have ever been during the war,

because rationing came about as a very scientifically placed programme.

Lord Woolton of the Ministry of Food

basically formulated with his advisors

this very specific diet that gave us exactly what we needed

to keep us fit,

because the whole thing about war when it came was being fit for war.

Talk us through, then, the sort of ingredients, because we often

talk about the minutiae of just how little you could have per week.

Well, when you actually get to the realities of it... Do you like eggs?

I like an egg, yeah.

How many eggs would you have a week?

Oh, that's a very good question,

I would probably plough through at least eight, nine.

Right. Well, there is your...

That's it? That's my weekly allowance?

That's it. Weekly allowance, yes.

The restrictions of rationing meant that come dinnertime,

the key ingredient was creativity.

When meat was a bit scarce, and just having maybe potatoes with margarine

mashed into them or potatoes with some milk mashed into them.

It tasted all right, to be quite honest with you.

My mother was a good cook.

If you got a fish head, cod head, she would boil it

and make the fish into fish cakes,

and you'd have them fried for a tea.

Maybe the more hungry you were, the more inventive you were.

This sense of inventiveness

when it comes to the recipe book is paramount, isn't it?

It is, absolutely. I mean, there was a lot of fake food going on.

We had to grow our own veg, that was the thing. We stopped importing veg.

Now, these, of course, adorned posters up and down the country,

-because they said...

-That it would help you see in the dark.

-Exactly.

-Now, have you heard of John Cunningham?

No.

He was a great fighter pilot, and the Ministry of Food basically put it

about that the reason he had such good eyesight was because he ate

loads of carrots, you see.

So there was John up there eating all those carrots,

but it wasn't anything to do with the carrots at all, obviously.

What had happened was our government was developing radar.

Presumably also we had a glut of carrots

and we were trying to push these on the population?

Oh, we did. We had a carrot mountain,

and what we had to do was encourage people to re-engage with the carrot.

Right. Now...

Ooh, what's this?

On the carrot front, I think you should try a little piece of this.

Right. Here we go.

I mean, I happen to love carrots, so that's gone down well.

OK, that's carrot fudge.

Carrot fudge!

That is carrot fudge.

Very sweet, though. Well, we've talked about inventive cooking,

Alison's hard at work here on the other end of the table.

What are you making there?

Well, you were just talking about how much vegetable

there was in the diet, people were eating lots of vegetables,

so we're making a Christmas pudding

which has got carrot, parsnip and beetroot.

The root vegetables really come into their own with this sweetness,

don't they?

And this is really, in actual fact, a really low-fat pudding,

it's got some of this delicious dried egg.

That's dried egg. Now, this was ubiquitous, wasn't it?

There were many a song and a poem

written about how awful dried egg was. Can I try a bit?

It looked like felt and tasted like rubber, apparently.

Oh!

Yeah.

That is like eating wallfiller!

Presumably, then, there was a whole kind of growth of recipes

that were broadcast on the radio, put in newspapers

to try and encourage people to use their imaginations

and to give them some solutions?

Well, basically, the morning started for the busy housewife

with Ambrose Heath at 08:30 in the morning with the Kitchen Front.

Kitchen Front recipes. I love this.

There's even a prologue set in 1940.

And then it gets on to pot roasting, fishy rice,

potato and apple cake. What else have we got here, watercress soup.

Making suet go further. There we are!

Well, that was at the heart of it - how do you stretch

this very limited resource out through the week?

Well, the proof of the pudding as always, is in the testing.

I'm going to see what this lot make of carrot fudge. Right, then.

Enjoy!

Who's for some carrot fudge?

You look like a likely candidate.

Right, go on, just pick that up with your fingers.

That's it. Now, tell us what you think.

Nice?

-Yeah? What's your name?

-Tom.

Tom gives it a thumbs up. Right, who's next?

Who's for a whole spoonful?

Urggghhh!

Ah! Now what have we got in here?

Potato and vegetable roll.

Now, what do you think, guys? Does that look appetising?

-KIDS: No!

-No!

This is a way of using all the leftovers, isn't it?

Absolutely, yes.

It's just made out of leftover vegetables,

leftover mashed potato, and you just make a big pastry.

Now, you didn't try the carrot fudge.

You didn't try it, come and try this, it's absolutely delicious.

Can you imagine eating this...

What a brave boy! Did you see that?

That's only potato! Come on. Have some vegetables, as well!

Can I have more?

Yeah!

It's actually really nice.

It's actually really nice, there we go!

I don't know about you lot,

but I have had a fabulous insight into wartime cooking,

and I think despite all the expectations,

it has tasted absolutely fantastic.

So, guys, let's give a big cheer to Sadie and Alison

and the wartime menu. Well done you!

Both rationing and Dig for Victory were resounding successes,

but they still weren't enough to keep the nation fed.

Ships crewed by Britain's merchant sailors had to run the gauntlet

of the North Atlantic to keep our American lifeline open.

Facing constant attack by German U-boats hellbent

on blowing them out of the water,

the brave civilian crews included some of the war's youngest heroes.

I've come to a church in Edinburgh to meet Billy McGee.

A former merchant seaman,

he knows what the boys just out of school had to face every day.

I was 16 years old, I was crossing the North Atlantic, gale force ten.

Absolutely horrendous weather, sea sick for five days

and these boys were doing it, but while being torpedoed,

fired upon, enemy radars, mines, U-boats

and that was without the weather, they just went and got on with it.

Many of the boys that served in the merchant fleet

during the war would lose their lives.

Now, half of these were aged 16 and under,

and 15 of them were only 14 years old when they were killed.

It was all about adventures and dreams, and I'm sure

a lot of these boys didn't realise the danger they were getting into.

And what kinds of jobs were they doing on these ships?

They'd do the daily chores of cleaning cabins out,

taking food to the officers,

taking cups of tea up to the men on the watch, on the bridge.

Basically just cleaning duties, you know.

Against his mother's wishes,

14-year-old Reggie Earnshaw joined the merchant navy in 1941.

In July of that year, his ship,

the SS North Devon, was attacked by German bombers.

His sister, Pauline Harvey,

still remembers Reggie's enthusiasm to sign up.

He lied about his age when he went.

Said he was 15 which he wasn't,

but he was obviously just fascinated with it - right, let's go,

be a cabin boy, and decided this is what he wanted to do.

They were going up to Newcastle, which was their base.

Now, the bombs didn't hit the ship, but they bounced round it

and in that, doing that, the steam lines were fractured.

And Reggie seems to have been in the engineer's corridor, trapped,

and he was scalded to death.

I do remember them bringing his coffin,

and it was put in what was his bedroom in the house,

and it stayed there until it came here for the funeral

with the strict instructions it wasn't to be opened.

I mean, to go and do that at 14 demanded,

needed a lot of courage, but life was so exciting to these boys

about doing it and I can understand why he did it,

but it's very sad that such a young life was lost.

Even on the day Germany surrendered, another young life was lost

when the Norwegian boat the Snaeland was attacked.

She lost seven crew members, which actually included

one young British boy who was only 16 years old.

The very last casualty of the U-boat war.

So, from the first day of war to virtually the last day of the war,

these young boys paid the ultimate sacrifice.

And everywhere, every day in between.

Relatives and friends have gathered

to dedicate a stained glass window commemorating the 500 boys under 16

who lost their lives in the war at sea.

Let us remember before God, and commend to his sure keeping,

Reginald and all those who died for their country in war.

Those whom we knew, those whose memory we treasure,

and all who have lived and died in the service of mankind.

They shall not grow old as we are who are left grow old.

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.

CROWD: We will remember them.

The country as a whole is extremely indebted to these men and boys

who served at sea during the war.

The contribution was immense,

and it's just a sad fact that even today, people know very little

about what the merchant navy did during World War II.

You know, for some people, this is an old tale.

It's not of great interest.

But as you can see, for me, and the congregation behind me,

this is a story which is very much alive.

A tale of one young man giving his life for his country.

And it makes you wonder, without boys like Reggie,

who knows where we'd be.

'Next time, I'll be exploring Newcastle's air raid shelters...'

That's a World War II chemical toilet.

'..uncovering the secrets of Churchill's

'clandestine civilian army...'

'..and chopping down trees with the Lumberjills.'

Some were termed Amazon women that were equally as good as them

at felling trees.

Timber!

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