WITH the current coronavirus pandemic turning the lives of West Fifers upside down, in this week's trip down memory lane we once again look back to the last time something as serious as this happened, during the Second World War between 1939 and 1945.

Various theories on when it is best to wear a mask, and what type to use, are being discussed today, and in the first of this week's images we can see the masks that were issued to people to protect them from potential gas attacks 80 years ago.

Jim Mackie, who had just started school in Ballingry, recalled his feelings on using them: "The smell! They got very hot from the breathing. And every now and then the councillors would come in and see you doing your gas mask drill. But they never had theirs on ...!"

To ensure people adhered to the regulations in place, such as making sure windows etc were blocked out at night to prevent enemy aircraft spotting potential targets, a force of air raid wardens was created and the next image shows a group of them posing for a formal photograph in Townhill.

Jim Clarke, as a boy in Lochgelly, used to help a warden at night on his patrol: "I recall we went out at night to check the houses that were showing chinks of light. Every house had window frames made, and what was called tar paper was nailed onto the frames. We were given instructions to visit the elderly and secure their blackout window frames. It was inky black and next to impossible to see, and we all carried sticks and used to rattle them against the walls to guide us home."

The sight of queues in shops and supermarkets is fast becoming a feature of everyday life under the shadow of the coronavirus today, and the next photograph shows just such a queue outside a shop in Dunfermline in the early days of the war in 1939.

The weekly ration for people in August 1942 was two ounces of butter, two ounces of cheese, two ounces of margarine, two ounces of cooking fat, two ounces of tea or coffee, four ounces of jam, four ounces of bacon, 12 ounces of meat, one egg and two pints of milk.

Just as today, people seemed to accept the restrictions as fair, as is recalled by Jim Mackie, of Lochore: "When you got your ration book, everyone was the same. The allocation for everybody was the same. I mean, you couldn't see that somebody was getting any more than you – we knew that and you just had to get on with it."

Many more people grew their own vegetables during that period to supplement their rations and people were encouraged to cultivate empty ground to grow even more.

The final image shows Dunfermline High School pupils digging up the school grounds in 1940 for vegetable planting to help with the war effort. Ways of supplementing supplies took many forms, and Jim Mackie recalls the way other forms of meat were utilised: "We were fortunate because up Benarty Hill and round about Ballingry we were polluted with rabbits and there were always plenty of poachers, and they went round the houses selling them at sixpence a pair – so you had boiled rabbit, fried rabbit, stewed rabbit and they even put it in the soup!"

More photographs like these can be seen in Dunfermline Carnegie Library and Galleries, where 'Old Dunfermline' DVDs will be on sale in the shop when it reopens to the public, and also at facebook.com/olddunfermline.