SCOTS who received care packages in the aftermath of the Second World War have shared stories of the 'rays of sunshine' that brightened the gloom of post-war Britain.

The charity Care International is seeking people who received the gifts, which were donated by generous Americans to people in Scotland who faced rationing for many goods.

They were distributed all over the nation to provide food for ordinary people struggling to make ends meet as the country rebuilt and recovered from the effects of the Blitz and the war.

Rose McGowan, 71, from Glasgow, said that she and her family received a package in 1947, at a time when sweets were strictly rationed in the shops and many goods were scare.

She said: "America to us was the land of the movies, and that was all we knew about the place until suddenly this package arrived.

"It really made an impression, and I remember a whole chicken in a jar being part of it. We'd never seen anything like it.

"There were chocolates and other things we just couldn't get in Scotland. I remember going to the shops with my ration book, so we were very grateful to receive a package like this."

Mrs McGowan said that her family lived in a single room in a tenement in Partick, and often struggled to make ends meet.

Fellow Glaswegian Pat Leslie, who was 11 when the war ended had been relocated to relocated during the war, and lives there still.

She said: “I remember the excitement of receiving the big, brown cardboard box with the bold black letters spelling CARE USA on the side"

"There was a tinned chicken in the first parcel we received and mum asked a neighbour for help, and they decided to stick it in the oven.

"But it turned out that the chicken had already been cooked and placed in jellified stuff before being tinned, so it came out of the oven all brittle and inedible."

The charity are hoping to find others with similar stories to tell, and have appealed for anyone who's family received one of the packages to contact them.

Colin Rogers, Head of Humanitarian Emergencies at CARE International UK, said: “Many of those recipients, though some only children at the time, will remember receiving their CARE package – more than 60,000 were sent to Scotland.

"We want find them and others like them and hear their story.”