Archive interviews give a very personal insight into Wick air raids
WICK VOICES: An update on the Wick Society's online oral history project by Doreen Leith
Through listening to oral histories we have access to the voices, experiences and stories of the past as well as the present. Wick Voices not only collects oral history recordings but, where possible, endeavours to make existing collections available to listeners.
During the 1980s the Caithness Oral History Project recorded the memories of some local people with a view to making the tapes available for use in schools. The project ended prematurely, due to a lack of funding, and the recordings were subsequently deposited with Nucleus: The Nuclear and Caithness Archive.
Wick Voices is working collaboratively with staff from Nucleus to make a selection of re-edited recordings from this project available online and it has been a privilege to track down surviving family members to gain permission for their relatives’ recordings to be shared and heard.
There was a dreadful sensation of flame and heat and stabbing pains in one's legs.
The addition of one of the interviews coincided with the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hill Avenue in Wick during World War II. Shortly after 6pm on October 26, 1940, three Heinkels flew over Wick, firing machine guns on the main streets and dropping high explosives on the north side of the town. Two bombs landed in front of the bungalow at 6 Hill Avenue, home of John and Georgina Cameron and their three children. After a tense few seconds, there was a blinding flash and a massive explosion.
At Wick Voices you can listen to the late George Cameron reliving the horrific ordeal of that awful day, and describing how he became known as "the boy that Hitler couldn't kill".
George was 14 at the time of the devastating blast that claimed the lives of his sister Betty (10) and brother John (6). "You felt that your body was filled with electricity and you felt that your whole body was being thrown up in the air – which it was, no doubt," he recalls in the recording. "There was a dreadful sensation of flame and heat and stabbing pains in one's legs."
Mr Cameron rushed the short distance from his grocery shop to find his home in ruins and his family suffering terrible injuries. Mrs Cameron and the children were carried to the nearby Bignold Hospital, which itself had been bomb-damaged. Betty and her brother John died soon afterwards. George and his mother survived, although their injuries were so severe that they spent months in a military convalescence home at Forse House.
Dorothy Dyer (20), the wife of an RAF sergeant stationed at the nearby aerodrome, and who had been billeted with the Cameron family, was killed outright.
His reminiscences also touch upon other aspects of wartime, such as watching the aircraft coming and going at the aerodrome, the blackout, rationing, air-raid shelters and anti-invasion measures in the countryside.
As well as claiming three lives, the attack of October 1940 left 13 people injured. It happened less than four months after the bombing of Bank Row, in which 15 people died.
Another cassette tape that was digitised and re-edited by Wick Voices tells the story of the Bank Row bombing. The recording was initially made in 1989 by Stuart Lawrence who was a P7 pupil at Hillhead Primary School.
The P7 pupils interviewed grandparents, neighbours and friends of the school, recording their memories of the bombings that took place in Wick during the war. Stuart interviewed Jimmy Clark , who recalled that fateful day on July 1, 1940, when the bombs fell on Bank Row. He explains that he was on the roof of the Portland Arms Hotel in Lybster, erecting a radio aerial, when he heard and felt the effect of the blast. He rushed to Wick to find his house had been damaged and he describes his frantic search for his wife and child. Fortunately they were both safe and unhurt. In the recording he goes on to describe various memories associated with the war.
The victims of both raids are commemorated in the Bank Row memorial garden in Wick.
Wick Voices can be accessed freely at www.wickheritage.org