| Description | Interview with Isabella Munro (nee McAndrew) MA 1943 recorded on 12 September 2003 and the interviewer is Jennifer Carter.
Transcription:-
JC It is very nice of you to come along whilst you are here for the graduates of 1943 reunion and tell us about your time as a student. Why did you come to Aberdeen University? You were mentioning to me that you were the oldest of this particular group and you had been held back at school by illness. Is that right?
IM Yes.
JC Then you went to which secondary school?
IM Banchory Academy.
JC You were fully fit by then were you?
IM Oh. yes, yes, I was just 6 when I had the rheumatic fever, so I had completely recovered.
JC But you felt the old one of the group did you because you were a year older?
IM Well I did.
JC So from Banchory was there any choice about coming to Aberdeen University or did you all do that automatically?
IM Well for one thing, we could get bursaries from Aberdeen County Council for Aberdeen I don't think we would have got them for any other university and it was our nearest university so naturally we didn't even think of going anywhere else.
JC Of course and the war was on already by the time you came up so that was probably another reason to stay near home.
IM Yes, quite.
JC And your family lived in Braemar, is that right?
IM Yes I was born and brought up in Braemar.
JC And went to primary school there presumably?
IM Yes I did.
JC What did your father do?
IM He was a motor mechanic and my mother had been a book-keeper.
JC So there wasn't a lot of money I would imagine to send girls to university?
IM No, but we weren't like the students today. We didn't get into debt, we just managed on what little we had. We were quite fortunate in that we could get work in the holidays without any bother.
JC I can understand that. So you had your, what was it? About £50 -£60 from Aberdeenshire Council, something like that?
IM £60 per year I got from them.
JC And you managed to live on that?
IM We did we also got half of our fees paid by the Carnegie Trust and we were expected to pay that back afterwards. Which I did not so many years ago and I calculated what the equivalent would be today with the price of a loaf of bread and a pint of milk. Just how they had risen in price and from that I calculated what I reckoned owed them!
JC That was very good of you. So you gave it to them with interest. I hope you got a very nice letter ….
IM Oh yes, I did indeed.
JC Because I am sure not everybody remembers that sort of small debt many years later! Okay and so you came to the University and you lived in digs, I know this already as your friend Mary has told me about it. You were the one who shared with her and you lived right near the University.
IM Yes and we were able to walk to King's every morning, no bother. We didn't have to spend money on tram fares.
JC And you had a good landlady, who fed you three meals a day.
IM We did.
JC Even though it was wartime?
IM Yes, yes.
JC Tell me a little about your sort of early impression about the University. I don't think there were any Fresher's weeks or anything in those days were there.
IM Well, of course I don't know about now, but in those days a first years male student was called a Bajan and the girls were called Bajanellas and there was this Bajanella Ball, a reception. It was held in King's and I think that all the other students who went would have paid, but the Bajanellas got in free.
JC Excellent. It was held in the Elphinstone Hall was it?
IM Yes the Elphinstone Hall, that's right.
JC So it was an official University do was it?
IM Oh yes, it was a recognised - I don't know if they still use the names Bajan and Bajanella?
JC No they have gone now.
IM What a shame. That is a pity.
JC Bajans, Semis, Tertians and Magistrands. Bajanellas, Semilinas, Trttianas. The Semilinas is not so good, is it! So you remember that as one of the highlights of your first week do you?
IM First week, yes I remember.
JC The University was quite small, I suppose?
IM Yes, compared with today. Yes indeed.
JC So you could, in a sense, get to know everybody quite quickly?
IM We did. We sort of knew everyone in our class by name.
JC And the balance between men and women in the class?
IM In our first year I would say it must have been about equal, but by the time we graduated the majority of the men were in the forces.
JC So increasingly it became an almost a woman's only MA class?
IM Oh yes it did. We had three men. I have a photograph taken just before the graduation ceremony and there were 3 men. Two of them were medically unfit and the third one had been in the Merchant Navy, torpedoed, invalided out and came back to join us. He didn't graduate with us but he is in the photograph because he was in our first year.
JC That must have been rather curious the way in which the make-up of your student group changed like that?
IM Yes I suppose it was but it was something that we just took for granted in wartime.
JC Yes I suppose it was. Of the men who were in the university I suppose most were Medics? You probably didn't see much of them except at dances and things.
IM That is right. Mostly they were going in for Medicine or some of them were going into Forestry or Agriculture and those Sciences.
JC And those were reserved occupations so you were not called up. I see. Interesting. And you took what courses when you started?
IM Well I did French and Latin in my first year, then I did Maths and English and History and in the 3rd year I did Botany, Moral Philosophy and Psychology.
JC That was a good spread of subjects.
IM Yes. Well for teaching I think that would be …
JC So you were aiming to be a primary teacher were you?
IM Yes I was
JC I will move that back or I will lose your sound! [Some interference]. I will have to put some sellotape over something! After a slight interruption where the apparatus went wrong we are resuming again! I was just hearing from Isabella about the people she remembers who taught her at University. And I think you mentioned Professor Black as one of them.
IM Yes, I remember him, but I have always been very interested in History, and I remember him in particular because he used to spend his Summer holidays, or part of them, in Braemar and he and his family lived in the house belonging to one of my aunts.
JC So did you used to see them, then?
IM Yes, we would see them during the holidays.
JC And talk to them and so on?
IM Yes we did.
JC Not just see them in the distance.
IM No, no.
JC And Catherine Gavin you said was one of your History tutors.
IM She was and her remarks when she handed back ones essays, historical essays, in front of the whole class, her remarks were extremely scathing and people cringed and dreaded what she might have to say about them!
JC So in History for example, I mean, you probably had lots of lectures but no tutorials, is that right?
IM No, I don't think we had any tutorials in History, just lectures.
JC You went away and wrote an essay and it was then returned in front of the whole class?
IM Yes, with the remarks being made in front of the whole class!
JC Not good. Did that apply to the other subjects you did, or something similar. Or did you have tutorials in any subject?
IM We had tutorials in Maths. I can't remember having tutorials in anything else, but my memory is maybe rather lacking …
JC You presumably had some practical classes in language, did you, when you did -- did you say you did French as one of your subjects?
IM Yes I did French. Well there was a French lady and we had conversation with her from time to time.
JC Among the other people who taught you, apart from J.B. Black and Catherine Gavin, have you any particular ones you remember for good or ill?
IM Well I remember Rex Knight being interested in the fact that I am one of those unusual people who have, what he called chromesthesia , but is which is now known as synesthesia , seeing things in colours. Words, numbers, days of the week, months of the year. I see them all in colours.
JC Which colour is Friday?
IM Friday is yellow.
JC That is interesting. Is this from childhood is it?
IM Yes, I grew up thinking everybody was like that you see.
JC How did you find out that you were different?
IM I didn't until I was in the Psychology class! I also have patterns and one day he told us about people with number patterns and asked if there were any in the class with such. Well there was myself and another two people and we were asked to draw our patterns on a blackboard and they were all different. Some were in curves, there was mine in straight lines and whether they went in curves or straight lines they went in tens, except for 11 and 12 and this was .. all three of us had this little bit of 11 and 12 in a separate line or curve from the others.
JC So it is obviously not that uncommon if there were 3 of you in a small class.
IM Well there was about 70 in the class about that time and there were 3 of us and at a later date he spoke about colours, people who saw things in colours and …
JC And you were the only one of those?
IM Well, somebody saw colours from notes of music and somebody else for the letters of the alphabet, but I was the only one who saw colours for all of them and I was the only person who had patterns for not only numbers but the days of the week, the months of the year and the Lords Prayer and he asked me to write them all out for him, which I did.
JC Has this been a disadvantage for you? Does it spoil your enjoyment when reading ?
IM No it doesn't. It sometimes a help if I can't remember a word. I see the colour, I know what colour it is and it limits the words it could be.
JC And when you study a foreign language do the words take on colour?
IM Oh yes they did.
JC Is it always the same colour?
IM Yes, it is consistent.
JC What I mean is if Friday is yellow, would the French equivalent of Friday also be yellow.
IM Oh yes, it would be.
JC How interesting. It is not a condition I have ever even heard of.
IM Well you see, I remember Rex Knight saying that had we grown up, those of us who had this number pattern, so had we grown up thinking everyone was the same, and we did, and the others all looked amazed, they didn't know there was such a thing. Well years later I was visiting a former classmate of mine with my late daughter, and the first thing she asked was whether my daughter had inherited it.
JC And had she?
IM No and she didn't know what we were talking about and it was such a natural thing to me that I had never even spoken to my daughter about it! I had never mentioned it to her. I just had never thought of doing so.
JC And your parents weren't the same?
IM My father had colours for the days of the week but that was all.
JC And had you spoken with him about it?
IM Not until after I discovered I was an oddity! Next time I went home I spoke about it and he had colours for the days of the week.
JC Fascinating. So Rex Knight obviously took a bit of an interest in you.
IM Well because of that!
JC Were there any other teachers who are outstanding in your memory?
IM No, I don't think so, not that I can remember.
JC Did you get to know any of your teachers personally, outside the classroom, apart from Prof. Black who came to your home town for holidays?
IM No I didn't.
JC So it was an entirely formal relationship?
IM It was..
JC And what about your fellow students, obviously it is a very small group we are meeting here, but were there any outstanding people among your fellow students you remember and followed their careers later?
IM Well there are some with whom I have kept in touch and visited and they have visited me, you know.
JC But there are none who have gone on to do famous things and you think " I was at University with so and so"?
IM Not that I can think of. There may have been but I can't think at the moment of any.
JC And how much difference did it make to you being at university in war-time. I mean there was obviously great difficulty over food and clothing, rationing and all that, but other than that?
IM Well for one thing…
JC Was it a very anxious time?
IM Well it was. We had quite a number of air-raids in Aberdeen and I can remember some of these air-raids, you know, they were a bit frightening at times, when the siren went you cringed..
JC You went into air-raid shelters every time did you ?
IM Not every time. We did sometimes but not every time, I am afraid, but we did once see… we lived quite near the sea and we once saw a fight with planes and tracer bullets going backwards and forwards, it was dark, and we went to the door and saw it.
JC Were you very politically conscious of the war. Did you feel very patriotic? How did you feel about Germans?
IM Well I didn't feel badly about Germans, but I did about Hitler. I mean, I quite ..I met a great many Germans in recent years and I visited Germany once or twice and I have liked the people.
JC You of course would have been a schoolgirl when the war broke out. Were you very politically conscious as a schoolchild. Or did the war just happen automatically as it were?
IM I don't think we were very …no, no.
JC Were you at all politically conscious as a student? I mean did you talk politics and talk about the post-war world or anything like that?
IM Well I remember one occasion when somebody created quite a disturbance among the students by saying that we must, I forget how he put it, anyhow that we must prepare ourselves for helping those people in the forces after the war. More or less implying that they were less intelligent than we were. Oh that sparked off quite a debate. It certainly did.
JC Were you at all active as a student politician yourself? You didn't join any student societies or SRC or anything?
IM No. there was the black-out and we didn't care to go out at night.
JC That's interesting. Once you got home you stayed home.
IM Well we didn't often go out at night.
JC I can understand that.
IM But if we did, I mean, there wasn't the fear there is at the present day. We couldn't afford the pennies for the tram, so if we did go out, we walked, and we didn't have the fear that people have today.
JC Of being mugged or robbed?
IM I remember once I was staying with my sister in Aberdeen and her daughter who was then a student who was going out to meet friends, and as she was leaving her father said "Now be sure to take a taxi home" and I said to him that when we were students we couldn't afford the pennies for the tram far less take a taxi. He said "you weren't in danger of being mugged" and it was true.
JC So if you did go out, apart from the student hops and dances, was it mainly the cinema you would have gone to?
IM Well we usually went there in an afternoon.
JC So you went to a matinee?
IM Well for one thing it was cheaper in the afternoon!
JC And you would have been getting home in daylight. So that was I imagine the main outside social thing.
IM It really was.
JC And were there sort of student events, other than the dances. I mean did you have a Rectorial, for example in your time?
IM Yes, there was. It was Sir Stafford Cripps who became the Rector.
JC And was he running on a sort of political platform, because it was 1943 you graduated ?
IM I think that had quite a lot to do with his having been the one who was elected.
JC So students were leftish leaning were they?
IM Yes, I think they were.
JC Because Aberdeen is a pretty conservative area.
IM Yes, it is.
JC Conservative with a small "c" I mean.
IM But it was just wartime..
JC And you were looking for better things after the war?
IM Hoping we would win the war.
JC Okay, interesting, and you were doing teacher training, the concurrent teacher training were you?
IM Yes I was.
JC So that involved a certain amount of teaching practice in the holidays and things?
IM Oh yes it did, which we did in our native villages and towns.
JC So you went back to Braemar.
IM Yes I did.
JC So tell me more about your holiday experiences and what went on in Braemar in wartime!
IM Well it was a very busy place in wartime with troops. The first ones who came were Canadian Forestry Corps and they were felling trees not only in Braemar but all up and down Deeside.
JC Presumably for war use.
IM Yes they would have been and their supplies must have come from Canada, because they would periodically have dances at which we got refreshments which wouldn't be able to be supplied by rationing only, and we had every week … we had a students' charity week and in first year I think another student and I went collecting and we went to the camp where the Forestry Corps were sited and we asked an officer if we could collect from the soldiers. He said that the best time to get them all together was when they come for their evening meal. In the meantime he took us over to the cook-house so that we could have a meal and we had lovely big slices of roast beef, roast potatoes then tinned peaches and carnation milk and finally we had coffee and big slices of fruit cake. Now these to us were a great treat. A real treat then. And then while they were still there we had Belgian refugees who came and they took over one of the big hotels in Braemar and they stayed there until the war finished. It was mostly secondary children and some of the teachers had primary school aged children and they went to the local schools and these children went home bi-lingual. They spoke English without a trace of an accent.
JC Except a Scottish one!
IM Well some of them even spoke some in the Doric. I hope they didn't lose it when they went home. There was quite an amusing incident. Most of them were Roman Catholics and there was a priest among them and he was in digs and one day he said to his landlady "Are you going to enter the hairdressing competition?" She said "I didn't know there was one". He said "the notice is in the barber's window?". So when she went for her shopping she went over to the barber's window and discovered that it was a Curling match!
JC Lovely. How would he know, poor soul, that it is the local sport!
IM Exactly and they stayed there until the war ended and on the 50th anniversary of them having come into Braemar, they booked the hotel for a week and those who had been children and were now elderly men and women came back and they gave a reception to the local people and invited the locals whom they knew to visit Belgium, the next year, and I believe many did go.
JC Did you go back for the reunion?
IM Well I didn't, because you see, I was…It was mostly the adults I knew so they would all be gone…but one of my sisters who had been with them in the Girl Guides and my brother who had been with them in the Scouts, they were both at the reunions.
JC And they enjoyed it, did they?
IM They did enjoy it very much.
JC Good, good. And what else happened? What sort of work did you do in the holdidays? Did you take a paid job?
IM Yes I did. I worked in the big, local baker's shop and that is why I knew the adults among the Belgians, but they would be all gone by now! Since I am old myself now!
JC And was the money you earned in the holidays important?
IM Yes, it was, definitely. It was essential.
JC And you didn't have to do any war work at all? Either in the holidays or term time?
IM Well we did fire-watching in term time and I fortunately was at the Botanic Gardens, for which I was thankful for I have no head for heights.
JC I don't see that as an awfully likely target, but I see what you mean! And you got a little bit of money paid for that did you?
IM Yes we got money to cover our supper as it were, but our landlady gave us sandwiches so we just pocketed the money. As for any other war work, knitting was mostly what we did. Knitting for the forces, knitting balaclavas, socks, scarves and things.
JC That was all organised by the Red Cross or something was it?
IM Yes it was. They supplied the wool.
JC It was one of the interests that in World War I a lot of that sort of thing was organised by the students, rather than by outside bodies. This was obviously not the case in World War II.
IM No it was from the Red Cross we got the wool.
JC Interesting. Students ran a canteen at the Railway Station in World War I for soldiers passing through Aberdeen .
IM Oh did they?
JC But that obviously didn't happen in your days?
IM Well not as far as I know.
JC You would have know it, if it was happening. Interesting. Anything else about your Braemar memories?
IM Well after these Canadians had gone, Commandos came to do training, mountain training in the hills and they would disappear for days at a time, mostly doing mountain training, but we learned afterwards that sometimes they were actually on raids! There were two I know who got decorations for bravery.
JC You told me you met some spies too. How did that come about?
IM Well as I said I worked in the baker's shop in my holidays and one day two women in WAF uniform came into the shop and asked about the chances of any army transport passing through the village and I said to them there would be none passing through the village. I had just a feeling about them and in any case it was quite true, because you don't pass through Braemar, the main road doesn't go through Braemar, so they went away and it was when my father came home that evening he said that there had been two spies caught quite near the Devil's Elbow. I said "Were they women in WAF uniforms?" and he said "Yes". He had seen them come off the bus and the first person they spoke to was the local bobby! But we never heard any more as everything was hush-hush in wartime. We never heard another thing about it.
JC Never heard what happened to them or whatever they thought they were doing in the Devil's Elbow?
IM They spoke perfect English. There was no trace of an accent.
JC Fascinating. So that was your big wartime adventure.
IM Well, yes it was. After the Commandos left we had KOSB's and they also had "mountain" stitched on to their shoulders and we thought that when they disappeared for days, we thought they were like the Commandos doing mountain training. We learned afterwards that they were going down to Lincolnshire for glider practice and they went in at Arnhem. Quite a few of them were killed. And this was all a blind, you see, this "mountain" sewn onto their sleeves. Then the final thing I remember is, by which time I had left University and was teaching in Braemar, when VE Day came and there was a big parade through the village. By the end we had Artillery and they had come back from Italy and some of them were walking wounded, they were back for a rest. Well there was a band led this parade and then came all these soldiers and then there were the Observation Corps, the Home Guard, the Fire Brigade, Guides, Scouts, Brownies and Cubs all marching, well the teacher of the Roman Catholic School was with the guides, my boss was with the Observation Corps and I had to take up the rear of this parade with all the little children who were not in any organisation and while everyone else marched they toddled and I was young and embarrassed at the time and it was a very embarrassing experience. I think that is about all I have to say.
JC Well very interesting indeed. Thank you so much.
IM Thank you.
JC Lovely.
End of Interview
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