Ina Brash – Women’s Timber Corps member from 16 Jan 1943 to 21 Nov 1946
Details and photographs kindly provided by Mairi Stewart the majority of which is as extracted from her writings for the Touchwood History Booklet ‘No rivalry but different’’.
“Ina (Thomasina) Brash was called up in 1943 when she was nineteen. Born in the Gorbals, she had worked in a shop and factory on the south side of Glasgow before the war, but, faced with going into a munitions factory, she took the plunge at her call-up interview. ‘What about this Women’s Timber Corp? “Oh yes, we are needing recruits for that.” So I said, ‘Well, yes, that would do for me.’ In 1943, after two months training, she was sent to Pityoulish in early March. The snow lay deep on the ground at Aviemore, where Ina and her companions arrived by train.
Ina continues: ‘It was about two miles out of Aviemore and ... [then we] turned off the main road ... to the camp. It was an army camp that had just been vacated by the army. I think there ... [were] three huts and an ablution. So there must have been quite a crowd of us right enough, because I think they were all full. The toilet was a hole in the ground with a box over it ... Well, I was used to a toilet in the stair, but this was something. It was very cold. But we had plenty of wood and resin to start the fire.’ Inside the huts, conditions weren’t much better. Ina recalls her bedtime routine. ‘We’d to tuck it [the blanket] well in for the cold because you wakened up in the morning with the frost in your nose. I mean the frost was lying in the bed when you got up in the morning.’ After the Pityoulish camp was closed in 1944, Ina was moved to Muckrach Lodge near Dulnain Bridge. What luxury Ina found at Muckrach – there were proper bathrooms. ‘Wonderful!’ At Pityoulish, water had to be heated in a boiler, which had a fire underneath, and Ina recalls that, once you’d got the boiler going, you had to stay close by because if you moved away, someone would come and steal your water.’ Ina laughs at the memory. But Muckrach had its downside too – rats.
Ina stayed on at Muckrach until 1946. Ina had the opportunity to go to Germany along with other WTC members. She chose instead to return to Glasgow, to look after her parents and go back to shop work. But of her years as a lumberjill she says, ‘The friendships that I gained … [The people are] what I remember. We were all townspeople who knew nothing about forestry but went out and cut down trees and handled axes ... We just did it.’”
The image above is of the ladies of Women's Timber Corps based at Pityoulish Camp, Aviemore in summer of 1943. The two men many be forestry or sawmill workers. Ina Brash is the lady standing second left.
Can names be place against any of the other people in the photograph?
Please see PDF link below for image of Ina in uniform.
The large image link with show the group photograph in more detail.
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Groups: Buildings in Forests, Forestry Areas, Women's Timber Corps - Timber Jills