Telegram

I have been quite lately, far too quiet. Please understand my creative procrastionation and life distractions by way of this story.

My papa, Irvine Clark, born in 1928, used to tell me stories as a child about unexploded mines in the Firth of Clyde. I did not pay much attention to his tales, sadly, but I remember he told me that he was the dreaded ‘telegram boy’ on a bike that nobody wanted to see.

We lived in Dunoon, where Irvine and I were born and raised.

The town bustled with American marines positioned on the Holy Loch during the Cold War; more notably, WWII families had settled and were established household names in Dunoon since the Blitz evacuations in Inverclyde and Glasgow.

We are all familiar with the Glasgow Blitz, which resulted in mass evacuation from the squalor of the tenements in the east end of Glasgow, while being lectured in a stuffy classroom, and some may have heard about the Clydebank Blitz.

However, the lesser-known Blitz happened in Greenock on 6 and 7 May 1941. The Luftwaffe flew down the Clyde targeting Inverclyde’s vital shipyards; however, the majority of the bombs fell on houses and residential areas, where many of the town’s population fled to tunnels in the east end of Greenock. 

Still, 271 people died during the Greenock Blitz, with over 10,000 injured. 25,000 homes were damaged, and 5,000 homes were destroyed.

At 03:30 on 7 May 1941, finally, the air raid sirens stopped to herald the end of the ruthless Luftwaffe, but much of the town was up in flames. Inverclyde’s fire service fought the flames and won the George Medal for their heroic efforts, which resulted in the loss of many of their lives.

Ironically, the shipyards remained mostly unscathed while the homes in Inverclyde burned.

My papa, Irvine, passed away in 2000; in fact, he passed New Year’s Day after celebrating the eve of the Millennium, and twenty years passed by before his tale was brought to the forefront of my mind once again.

A BBC article flashed across my Android like a telegram: 

WWII mines in the Firth of Clyde, 2020

The pristine unexploded German sea mines were found close to Wemyss Bay after eighty years, where the Royal Navy was required to carry out a controlled explosion. Eighty years after the Greenock Blitz, while we self-isolated or partied like Boris Johnson, it does not matter too much anymore; the Luftwaffe reminded us yet again, like the pandemic, life is precarious.