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[interview 1 = Bishop Edward Daly, 8 mins 06 secs]
This story is taken from an interview with Bishop Edward Daly, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interview was by Deirdre Donnelly, and transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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When the war began I was about 6-7. I lived on the border in Fermanagh, in a little village on the border named Beleek. The pottery was the main source of employment.
Some time in late 1940 there was a lot of activity, and they started building bases a number of miles from where I lived, around Irvinestown, on the shores of Lough Erne. They started building a radio base, 2 huge masts in view of our home.

After Pearl Harbour, Mid-42 the Americans started arriving. There was constant air traffic. The existing base was a training base for RAF fighters. The Americans built a base on the shores of Lough Erne, Castle Archdale area. They also built a Radio base beside Belleek, as near the coast as possible because Donegal came in between, to catch radio messages from ships and planes in the Atlantic. It was the westernmost radio point in Europe on the Atlantic that the Allies had at that point.

Quite a number of Americans were there. They were very kind, and gave things. Sweets, chocolates, fresh fruit were unknown during the war. They had parties out at the base, and provided us with candy and chewing gum and bananas.

The first coloured man I’d ever seen in real life — I’d seen them in pictures and books before — the American soldiers, quite a number of them there were black guys. They were lovely big fellows and extremely kind to us.

They used to get drunk and play baseball on the main street. It was a big wide street, never any traffic there.
They bought a donkey off a farmer who hadn’t been able to sell it. Then they fed the donkey Guinness to see if it could get drunk!

They had wonderful Xmas parties.

We used to cycle to Enniskillen to see the sea-planes land on Lough Erne. American and Canadian Catalinas, Canadian and British Sunderlands. Flying boats. One of them spotted the Bismark.

In 1943, more and more US troops arrived all across Fermanagh. They held Manoeuvres with tanks and troops in full battle gear. It was very exciting. But the war was at a safe remove, we read about it in newspapers.

There was a huge buildup in the early part of 1944. But the second part they all disappeared. All in France, on the Second Front after D-Day.

In 1944 I saw a plane crash. A British-Canadian Crew, a Sunderland flying boat. We were working at hay on a field, and we saw this plane circling, trailing black smoke. It tried to land on the bogland. 2-3 of the crew were killed.

Food, clothing, school-books — all the things we take for granted were hard to get then, rationed.

Quite a lot of girls locally got married to Americans. Men were very scarce. The men were all away, working or in the services.
Working for the Americans and the British, building AFBs, provided an awful lot of employment. It’s said Derry was never more prosperous.

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