Secret diary reveals life as a PoW

TWO SISTERS are hoping to donate a secret diary, kept hidden in their father’s boot during the First World War, to a museum in time for the conflict’s centenary.

Robert Simpson had kept the treasured diary in 1917 while he was a prisoner of war in France and it has been with the family through the years.

But now his daughters Lily McLeod, 87, and Moira Sim, 91, want to give the diary to a museum so it can go on display for anyone who has an interest in the Great War.

The sisters believe their father would have been shot if he had been caught with the diary because it could have fallen into the hands of the enemy and given away information.

Moira said: “We are getting older and we felt the time was right to pass the diary on to a museum.

“We would like it to go to the Royal Artillery Museum but we have contacted the military museum at Edinburgh Castle as well and are waiting to hear back from them for their advice.

“The diary is very special to us as we lost our father at a young age and it is a part of him but feel giving it to a museum would be a good way to remember him.”

Mr Simpson was originally

from Kirkcaldy and after he left school he got a job at a linoleum factory in the town.

He was 24 when he enlisted on Octoberr 25 1915.

Moira said: “He was home just before the NewYear in 1918.

“He served as a bombardier with the RoyalArtillery. But he was a PoW in France for nearly two years.”

Lily, who lives in Kirkcaldy, said: “During his time in captivity he kept a diary and he managed to keep it hidden in his boot.

“It gave some detail about his time as a prisoner.”

The sisters said they believe he kept a diary to be used as an outlet for his feelings as the conditions were hard.

In the diary he talks about being “landed at the cage of misery” with no coats, and to lie down it was “bitter cold”.

He also says that food was scarce, with rations consisting of two thin slices of bread per day, one bowl of dirty water for dinner and the same for tea.

But later he suggests that conditions improved once they started receiving parcels from the Red Cross and were under control of the Belgians.

Moira, who lives in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, said: “It must have been hard because he swears a lot in the diary and it was not in our father’s nature to swear.

“He would have had to be very careful not to get caught writing the diary because he would have been shot had they found it.”

She said that after he returned from war he went back to working at Ostlere’s linoleum factory where he remained until his death at the age of 42.

She added: “The diary gives an insight into what being a PoW was like as our father never spoke about it.” THE LATEST Caird Hall RSNO concert — with Rossini, Beethoven and Richard Strauss — was a wwonderful feast of music.

Grand symphonies and elongated overtures are part and parcel of the RSNO repertoire, but tone poems like Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben seldom come along.

It is a shame because the pperformance, and conductor Peter Oundjian’s interpretation, was outstanding.

The hero’s swaggering confidencec in the opening phrases was perfectly captured — as was the skittish carping of his ccritics, with the RSNO woodwind and brass enjoying some marvellously inventive composition.

The highlight for me was leader Maya Iwabuchi’s performance as the complex and coquettish hero’s wife, as technically perfect as a solo can be outwith the bounds of a cadenza.

The battle scenes were suitably rumbustious, but the work as a whole was a glorious mix of sound and colour — delivered by an orchestra revelling in a score of lyrical and dynamic brilliance.

The concert had started with the light frivolity of Rossini’s overture to The Silken Ladder and brief though it may be, it was to be savoured despite a slightly laboured start.

As the performance gathered pace, Oudjian added a final accelerando that led to an exhilarating finale.

Exhilarating does not come close to describing pianist Ingrid Fliter— more meaningful superlatives are needed with regard to her performance of Beethoven’s 4th piano concerto.

Oundjian described her as a “miracle” and she did conjure up a performance of supreme class.

The key to this superb performance was the combination of orchestra and soloist — with Oundjian introducing some marvellous touches of subtle rubato.

It was moments like these, and the outstanding capabilities of Fliter, that made this performance one to remember.

Pictures: Mark Ferguson. Above: Moira, left, and Lily; a picture of their father and notes from his diary.

Robert Simpson’s diary.