大象传媒

During World War Two Edith Sheridan was a teenager in rural County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland on the border with the Irish Republic. Like many people the war impacted on her life in many ways and she told me about her experience of Yanks, rationing, smuggling and of an 鈥榦ld-fashioned鈥� evacuee.

Influence of the Yanks
I attended school from when I was five and a half years old until I was in my teens. I would have loved to work in a draper鈥檚 shop and I went in to Enniskillen with my mother and was more or less accepted for a job. At that same time, however, because of the war the Yanks came to County Fermanagh. That was enough for my father. Whether it was an excuse or not I don鈥檛 know, but he wanted me at home to work. I would have to walk half a mile to the bus and he said, "That's enough, she's not going鈥� and that was that. So that was the end of that. Maybe it was the Yanks that worried him, I don't know. They did I suppose get a bad name with girls. So I think maybe that was it, he had heard rumours I suppose, yeah. I think that was it. So during the war years I was at home as a young teenager

Raising money for the Army
There were dances organised during the war years to raise money to send supplies for the army - socks and things like that. There was also a lot of knitting and so forth. We were keen on dancing so my older sister and I used to go and my father would let us go - but we always had to ask or get someone ask for us. He would know as well as we did that there was a dance on; he would have the local newspaper, the Impartial Reporter. He would be sitting reading it and would know that we were going to ask but you wouldn't know by him. So somebody had to ask, perhaps a boyfriend could ask, that was ok.

Rationing
Rationing was introduced and there were lots of things you could not buy unless you had coupons. We always killed a pig at home but it came to a point where you had to declare everything you had and you were only allowed to kill so much. Sugar and most things were rationed. We had extra butter at first because we were making it from the milk but then we had to send everything to the creamery. We didn鈥檛 have any milk to make it with and so we then bought whatever butter we needed. There was never enough sugar in our house so two of us, my older sister and I, decided because we could only get it now and again that we would go off sugar in our tea so we did; and we stayed off it.

My sister worked in a shop owned by our brother. Butter was sliced out in pieces of two ounces for each person weekly. Also sugar, tea, bacon in similar small amounts. People could get a small tin of fruit monthly, but there were no bananas. Clothes were all rationed and shoes and other things had to be got with coupons and there were no nylons unless you were friendly with the Yanks.

Farmers had to plough a number of fields in accordance with their total acreage. Carrots had to be sown as they were supposed to be good for airmen鈥檚 eyesight but all the main crops including potatoes were grown for supplying to the army camps.

Getting goods across the border
Being so close to the border this part of the country was very different to other areas and I think that in order to get by people might have done a bit of smuggling. Maybe across the border they would have plenty of one type of thing and we might have something different, so there was an exchange. Often we used to go across the border to get different things. At the start, before I was married, I didn鈥檛 live as close to the border as I am now so we cycled to Swanlinbar or sometimes to Blacklion, County Cavan. There were checks on the border but we had a way of escaping them. I can remember different times and we nearly always got word some way. If there was a car coming out from the Republic and there was somebody on the look out they would flash their lights and then you would be careful. I can remember on one occasion coming out from Blacklion, I was with a sister-in-law and my father. Whatever he told us to do we would do without question. I had a wide coat on and he give me a bottle of whiskey and a bottle of something else, I forget what. But we were coming out and before we knew the police were in front of us. I dropped down the bottles onto the grass, just walked into the grass and dropped them. When I went back they were still there - by good luck, because they might not have been; it was the edge of the road there could have been stones, but we were just lucky.

Evacuees
After the bombing started evacuees came from Belfast and went to different places across County Fermanagh. They were about for a quite a while and after the war they went off. It was a big change in the area having evacuees. If there was a house, and there were only two people living in it, particularly if it was a big house, then there was no question of not taking them.

In most cases they settled in well but if there were some people that had no children and just didn't understand them. So sometimes they went back to Belfast again or maybe were moved to another house. One thing that does stand out in my mind was when I was going to Church. This was before I was married and we were in the choir, there were five of us - three girls and two boys. There was this man, although of course at that time he was only a boy. I had my hair long which I hated and in a plait mostly and this boy was behind in the choir and he would pull my hair. I also remember one occasion, it was night, and we were coming from a choir practice and I got a puncture. He came along and I don't know what he was doing to me anyhow but I lifted the pump and hit him with it. He turned out to be really clever afterwards. He wrote books and became quite famous 鈥� his name is Robert Harbinson. I've got his books now and he has even mentioned my sister and I in it. H e has written about his time in County Fermanagh during the war years. But I didn't like him at all; I was really annoyed with him.

Teenage rebellion
My two sisters and I had very long hair. We were the only children at school that had our hair long at that time; everyone else had their hair cut short. We pleaded with our father to allow us get our hair cut but no way, my mother wouldn鈥檛 allow it. So anyway when I was old enough to go to dances I really hated this plait down my back. I decided one day that I was not going to put up with it any longer. It was the only time I ever defied my parents. I got a local boy that I knew to cut it. My mother was very sad because I had very long lovely curly hair. She went out, I didn鈥檛 know this at the time, and gathered up my hair off the street and kept it. She gave it to me years later and I still have it, but its no good now as it is not the same colour!

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