THE "Those Were The Days" feature ("Glasgow war and the children who helped clear the damage", The Herald, September 5) and the letters from Russell Martin and Iain A D Mann (April 7) about the German bombing of the west end of Glasgow on the nights of the Clydebank Blitz also brought back very sad memories.

I was a five-year-old living in 21 Lime Street, a terraced house in Whiteinch when in the evening a land mine fell just round the corner on another terraced house on Victoria Park Drive South. Our house was the first house on the west side of Lime Street where the occupants were not killed. Between 23 Lime Street and round the corner for a number of houses in Victoria Park Drive South all the occupants were killed.

My mother, who was injured trying to put out our fire with fallen bricks and rubble, received a war pension for an injury to her hand for the rest of her life. In addition to my mother there was her friend, my older sister and me sheltering in the bathroom under the stairs of the house which may well have saved us. My father was in the city centre in his favourite pub in Renfrew Street (Whiteinch was then a dry area) and he had to walk all the way to Whiteinch as the trams were off due to the Blitz. On reaching the foot of Lime Street on Dumbarton Road all he could see were ambulances and fire engines and he could find no trace of his family. He searched for us all night and finally found us at a rescue centre where we had been taken, after a distraught 10 hours.

One of my earliest memories was being carried out of our wrecked house by a fireman who rescued our family. I remember also being told later that when the land mine was floating down it was spotted by an armed member of the Home Guard who was running up Lime Street intending to capture a German parachutist when at the last moment he realised it was a land mine and saved himself by throwing himself to the ground.

The houses in both Lime Street and Victoria Park Drive South were rebuilt by the government in the early 1950s.

I often drive to Lime Street and have a walk around for old times' sake and I also realise how lucky we were to survive.

James J Morland,

7 Craigenlay Avenue, Blanefield.

PERHAPS I can answer Ian Mann's query on the Glasgow blitz as to why the Germans used parachute mines rather than bombs. After release the descending mine, attached to a parachute, was detonated by an on-board barometric device when it was still some 60ft above ground level. The resultant "air blast" (similar to the effects of a nuclear bomb) covered a far greater area and causing much more damage and casualties than a conventional bomb, which only exploded on contact with something on the ground.

A similar situation arose in Edinburgh in September, 1940 when a Luftwaffe parachute mine exploded directly overhead a whisky bond in Duff Street in the Dalry area, starting a massive fire and destroying many tenement properties. Mr Mann is correct in stating mines were less accurate but at that time in the war the Luftwaffe's policy was to inflict as much damage as they could over as wide an area as possible.

Brian Farish,

10 Baird Grove, Edinburgh.