WAY Remembering the 92 heroes
WE REVISIT DEREK PARKER’S RAMBLES THROUGH RENFREWSHIRE
Mine of information
Today, Paisley is florally festooned with golden daffodils and pink and white cherry blossom.
But 67 years ago, flags flew at half mast, black crepe curtains draped shop and house windows and the town was in mourning.
Wartime reporting restrictions meant the Paisley Daily Express headlines on May 6, 1941, could only hint at the extent of the disaster: ‘First Aid Post Struck: Considerable Damage Done’.
But everyone knew that 92 brave men and women were killed when a German mine demolished Woodside Number Five Post in the West End in the early hours of morning.
The six-feet-long incendiary was dropped from a Heinkel bomber.
It was attached to a parachute to slow it down so it would explode above the surface of the ground and not sink harmlessly into the soil before detonating.
The victims, whose dismembered body parts were blasted onto roofs and trees in nearby King Street
Derek Parker knew many of Paisley’s secrets – the grimy and the good.
He wandered every corner in search of the clues that would unlock Renfrewshire’s rich history.
These tales were shared with readers in his hugely popular Parker’s Way column.
We’ve opened our vault to handpick our favourites for you.
and William Street, were doctors, administrators, nurses, ambulance drivers, attendants and messengers.
The youngest was 16 and the oldest, Dr James Bonnar Russell, was 69.
Dr Russell, a registrar at the First Aid Post, was minister of Canal Street – now Castlehead – Church.
In a cruel twist of fate, his wife Agnes, 62, and daughter Effie, 30, were also killed in what was Paisley’s worst disaster.
Agnes, an Edinburgh University graduate, was an ambulance driver, while Effie, an Oxford University graduate, was an ambulance attendant.
Three weeks before his death, Dr Russell celebrated his semi-jubilee at Canal Street Church at a social evening.
He received a wallet of bank notes from the congregation. Agnes was given a handbag.
Less than a month later, the three wreath-covered coffins of the Russell family stood in front of the Reverend Doctor’s pulpit at Canal Street Church. They were then conveyed the short distance for committal at Woodside Crematorium near where the family died.
“They were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their deaths they were not divided,” said the Reverend James Marr, of Paisley’s Thread Street Church, in his funeral eulogy.
“They have stepped from the dusty highways of earth to the gold-paved streets of the New Jerusalem.”
On the 67th anniversary of their deaths, we remember with pride and gratitude the 92 heroes of Woodside who gave their lives for Paisley and its people.