1941: Found alive after eight days in ruins of blitzed tenement

ON May 23, 1941, a note in the Editorial Diary of the Glasgow Herald read: “We saw a notice on the sole remaining wall of a blitzed house. It said: ‘PLEASE DON’T GAPE’. It came as a surprise to realise that we really earned the admonition.”

The damage caused by the Luftwaffe on Clydeside two months earlier had of course been severe. In the days following the raid, there were several reports of people being dug out of ruined buildings. One woman lay buried in her shattered tenement for almost six days before being found. A doctor, Steven George, clawed at the rubble with his bare hands to reach her and give her stimulants and injections. “He worked like a trojan,” said one of the rescue squad. The woman was brought out, but she died a few hours later in hospital.

Two men were discovered alive in the wreckage of a Partick tenement after almost eight days. John Cormack (pictured) was found lying in a bed, and he astonished rescue workers by feebly waving his hand at them through the wreckage. “Could you go a cup of tea?”, a doctor asked. “Aye, ah could fine,” he responded. He was given tea and brandy, and a cigarette, before being brought out. He told workers that there was a young girl close by and that she had spoken to him a day before. The girl’s body was later recovered. The other man, a War Reserve Policeman, died in hospital, but Cormack, 22, was able to read a book – My Man Jeeves, by PG Wodehouse – when photographers visited him at the Western Infirmary.

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