Talking with Anne last week, she said that my grandmother usually chose some kind of ground meat (eg mince) over a cut of meat to use as the basis for her meals; a cut of meat might be tough when cooked, but you could be fairly ‘safe’ with ground meat. So this week, I’ve decided to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps and bought one pound of minced beef for our joint meat ration this week. Tonight I made a cottage pie with sliced potatoes and a mustard sauce on top. It tasted good and was just the kind of comfort food suited to the chill in the weather that arrived yesterday. For veggies (and colour) I fried some white and red cabbage together.

Looking through The Glasgow Herald for October 27th, 1944 I found quite a few articles that interested me. The war news remained ‘encouraging’ with reports that Japanese losses included 2/3 of their battleships sunk or damaged, and 600,000 German Home Guards had recently been armed and were ready to leave to defend East Prussia and Western Germany. One commentator remarked, “In a few weeks winter will begin in Western Europe and the question arises whether the Germans can somehow prolong resistance to it.”

A resolution was passed regarding the creation of The Forth Road Bridge just outside Edinburgh. (It would be 20 years before it was completed and opened to the public.)

The new double ration of dried eggs meant that everyone now got the equivalent of 6 eggs per week.

A bottle of whisky cost around 25/9d.

A Scottish firm had plans to create a Global Air Service based out of Prestwick Airport. (Used by the military during WW2 and still, I believe, used by them as well as by civilian traffic.) The proposal was very ambitious:
A night sleeper service to New York, for passengers, 1st class mail and freight. There would be one stop either at Goose Bay or Labarador (both in Newfoundland).
A day service to and from Canada and the US via Iceland, Greenland and Goose Bay.
Prestwick to Northern Europe with flights to Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Oslo and Stockholm.
A global route around the Northern Hemisphere via Moscow, Peking, Vladivostok, Alaska and Vancouver, with ‘loop lines’ serving Central Europe, The Middle East, Karachi, Calcutta and Hong Kong.
The initial planes would be converted military aircraft.
(A piece of trivia; Prestwick airport is officially the only piece of UK soil that Elvis Presley ever stood on!)

Over 1,300 Liberators and Flying Fortresses of the US Eighth Air Force, escorted by more than 600 Mustangs and Thunderbolts, yesterday hit targets in Germany including Munster and Hanover at 3.30pm.

Queen Victoria’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice Mary Victoria, died yesterday, aged 87.

As someone who has done a lot of research on Army Nursing Sisters, this article caught my eye: RAF Nursing Sister: Largs Sister’s Work.
In the four months since D-Day, 34,000 seriously wounded British, Canadian, French and Polish soldiers, airmen and sailors were flown from airstrips in France and the Low Countries to a great RAF Hospital in Southern England.
For the few days that they remain in the Casualty Clearing Hospital – the only one in Britain – these men are in the hands of the most highly skilled nursing sisters in the British Services. They are members of Princess Mary’s RAF Nursing Service, the least publicly known of all the women’s services.
A typical member of the hospital staff is Sister Janet Hastie from Largs. She was working day and night in the RAF hospital in Cairo when the 8th Army retreated to Alamein. She wears the Africa Star and the clasp of the Western Desert Air Force.