In 1942, the British troops were engaged in various campaigns, including in North Africa. It was there that Mgr Thomas Monaghan's uncle, Jimmy, was stationed.
"During the Second World War, while bombs fell across the globe, my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Jimmy composed a quieter kind of history: a courtship in letters. She, stationed at her post as a schoolteacher in the grey-stoned town of Paisley, and he, under the pitiless sun of North Africa, battling Rommel’s desert forces. Their missives were more than correspondence—they were small acts of love and of defiance against the tyranny of distance and war.
Their shared love of Robert Burns formed a kind of secret code between them, each letter seasoned with snatches of verse. Burns, that great chronicler of love and loss, gave them the words they sometimes could not say aloud. His poems were threaded through their letters like golden seams in a soldier’s worn tunic—sometimes playful, sometimes wistful, always binding. Uncle Jimmy came home, when all was done, not with the swagger of a hero but with the quiet dignity of so many soldiers who had seen too much to speak about. He returned to teaching and, in time, was appointed a magistrate in Paisley—a role he bore with the same calm conscience he had brought to the war. Years passed and one afternoon, when memory had softened the edges of grief, Aunt Margaret invited my cousin Hugh to sit with her. From a box, she drew out the letters they had written one another, unfolding them with reverence, as though each line might carry her back to those long-ago days. And then, from the margins of her cherished book of Burns, came the lines she had once written in her own hand:
"The Church is in ruins, the state is in jars, Delusions, oppressions and murderous wars We dare na weel say't but ken wha's to blame, There'll never be peace till Jamie comes hame." And Jamie did come home, but not all of them did."
Life Goes on
Despite the harsh rationing and the fear of getting bombed, many people have testified that life simply had to go on. Jean Anne Brady shares how her parents, Sarah McEwan (St Joseph's, Clarkston) and William Hendry married on July 4th 1942: "My mother's priest brother Fr. James McEwan was the celebrant that day. He was based in St. John's Port Glasgow at that time. Their reception was held in the garden of their home on Eagleshan Road. My mother told me there was a shortage of food, and friends and neighbours were saving foodstuffs to contribute to their reception that day. My aunt, Bridget McEwan, was also married from the same home and in the same parish of St. Joseph's in August 1944. She married a Polish airman, a Balloonist based in Scotland and recruited by the RAF. His name was Zymunt Miley. He was born in Warsaw and at that time all his family had been killed in Poland."
WOMEN AT WAR
The war and the conscription of men meant that women had to take upon more traditional male roles. Many women became skilled factory workers, enlisted in armed forces or helped with the civil defence. Agnes Bonnar's mother, Sarah Arkley (St Mungo's, Greenock), contributed to the war effort: "My mother worked in the yards during the war and loved it. She used to tell us how they worked as welders, platers, riveters and many more. They also got nylons and bags of sugar from the Americans and shared this out because of rationing; it was scarce. They had to walk up from Brown's yard in the dark when they finished their shift because of the blackout but weren't afraid. She always said people just got on with life even during the blitz when Greenock was badly hit."