THE photographs in this week's trip down West Fife's Memory Lane are from the Second World War 2 and the last time Dunfermline faced as grave a crisis as the current coronavirus outbreak.

The first photograph shows Rosyth children being evacuated at the beginning of the war in September 1939.

Rosyth had been identified as one of the areas most likely to be targeted by enemy bombing and the children can be seen leaving Park Road School preparing to leave for destinations in the countryside that were deemed to be safer locations for them.

The scene at Rosyth Halt railway station was reported as follows: "As the train drew out, silence reigned. A few of the small crowd of anxious, dry-eyed mothers waved handkerchiefs. A lonely voice was heard to shout a last farewell and the first of the children passed out of the 'danger-zone'."

The Dunfermline Press had to adhere to strict censorship during the war which limited what it was able to report on. One area was the coverage of air crashes, which initially were not permitted to be reported on at all, though later allowed if they had been witnessed by large numbers of people.

On one Friday afternoon when the streets of Dunfermline were crowded with shoppers, two fighters piloted by Polish airmen collided in mid-air over the town. Both planes crashed and one of the pilots was killed.

The Press was prevented from reporting on this, with the explanation from the chief censor for Scotland being: "We had already passed a story of an air crash at Cupar that day, and we simply couldn't have two crashes in Fife on one day."

On top of their normal jobs, many people volunteered to undertake other tasks to help with the war effort, and the next photograph shows firewatchers at the Castleblair textile factory in Dunfermline. At the back are Willie Laughlan, Bella Condie, Ina Ritchie, Betty Hunter and Sandy Bowman. Pictured in the front are Annie Jordan and Chrissie Laughlan.

The next photograph is of members of '36 group' Dunfermline Royal Observer Corps who were trained in the tracking of enemy aircraft movements and who gave invaluable support to the anti-aircraft units of Scotland during the war.

The first air attack on Britain took place on Monday, October 16, 1939, and it was in the skies over the River Forth. The Luftwaffe's target was naval shipping, and 16 sailors were killed and 44 injured.

Before censor restrictions took effect, the Press reported on the reaction of Dunfermline residents who had watched the puffs and rings of smoke of anti-aircraft sells bursting at great height. "Gradually there came over the onlookers an uncomfortable feeling that what they were witnessing was no practice but the real thing ... people in the Public Park actually heard the rattle of machine gun fire."

With the possibility of some form of food rationing one of the measures currently under consideration, the final photograph shows a Dunfermline shopkeeper explaining the intricacies of the food rationing system that operated at that time to one of his young customers.

Falling foul of the rules meant ending up on the wrong side of the law – in August 1941, a labourer in Rosyth Dockyard was fined £7 with an alternative of 30 days' imprisonment for the crime of resetting a tin of gooseberry jam and a tin of orange marmalade.

More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries, where 'Old Dunfermline' DVDs will be on sale in the shop when it reopens to the public, and also at facebook.com/olddunfermline.

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