大象传媒

My memories of the 1939 -1945 War
The beginning of September 1939 -1 was 4, almost 5, and my brother was 3. Altho' we would have heard talk of war, we didn't know what it meant - even what the word meant. Of much more importance was the fact that I was going to school for the first time. Our headmaster, Jim, lived with us, so we went to the country school where he taught
War meant gas masks. I have a very faint memory of having it fitted - the fitter held a piece of paper against the `snout' to see if it was a proper fit, and didn't leak anywhere. From then on, we had to carry it everywhere we went
War meant soldiers, canteens, soldiers, Jim joining the R A F, soldiers, blackout, more soldiers, we had a big hole dug in the back lawn to make an air-raid shelter, but never roofed over. Even without a roof, it would have been safe in an air raid, short of a direct hit, but for us it was just a grand place to play in dry weather, it flooded when it was wet.. As children do, we very quickly took it for granted.
War meant the front lawn was dug up, and planted with potatoes - we all knew `Dig for Victory' and `V for Victory', the Radio Doctor and recipes given on the wireless when rationing started. War meant Make Do and Mend, and we did - even relatively small girls could learn to darn socks and stockings. War meant going bare legged and often bare foot in the summer - wonderful!
War meant soldiers. My father wanted to join up, but with a wife, two children and a mother to support, and not much money, added to the fact that he would not have been Al fit for the army, it was impractical. He didn't want to be stuck in an office or store, so decided he might be of more use at home. When it was formed, he joined the Home Guard for the duration.
War meant aeroplanes. Even in the middle of Tyrone, occasional planes went over, and so unaccustomed were we to them that everyone rushed out to see them. Even in school, if one was heard, everyone, including the teachers, ran to look out of the windows. From the train going to Portrush, we passed the Eglinton Airport as it is now. There were always planes on the ground there, and everybody crowded to that side of the train to see them - it was the closest anyone could ever get to them.
War meant barrage balloons. These flew near the docks in the two cities, great big silvery things that looked like very short fat aeroplanes with tail fins, and bobbed about overhead in the wind. We weren't concerned about the tactical use of such things - we thought they were wonderful.
War meant air raid shelters in the streets in Belfast, made of concrete, and damp and nasty smelling. War meant our cousins in Belfast boasting about going to the shelters in the middle of the night, and being there thro' the bombing raids.
War meant my mother and grandmother watching the night the German planes went over our house on their way to bomb Londonderry, and discussing whether or not they should get us up and outside - would it be safer? My mother insisted we shouldn't be disturbed until it was absolutely necessary, so we slept thro' the whole thing and knew nothing at
all about it.
War meant my father was on duty that night, and saw half the town emptying as people headed out to the country to the quarries for safety.
War meant the woman with several children and a baby in the pram suddenly discovering the baby was still in the house - the pram was empty.
When they married, my parents started to save towards setting up their own business, but when war started they decided to use their savings for the war effort. We already had a large army camp, which was rapidly expanding in the town, and local people were asked if they would open their homes to officers - it was felt that the privates would be adequately looked after in the canteens. However, my parents opened their home to any soldier, regardless of rank, on Thursday evenings and Sunday evenings, and the boys weren't slow to take up the offer - all ranks; rank disappeared when they came thro' our gates.
All but two of them were known by their Christian names; one of these had come over on business to London from the Channel Islands, and while he was on the mainland the Germans invaded the islands, so he couldn't go home. Naturally, his business was no more, and with anywhere to go and no money, he ended up in the army, altho' he was well over age. His surname was Laurens, and he was known to all of us as Lawrence. He came back to us for his leave at one time, and took my brother and me out to the NAAFI and bought us sweets - a real treat.
Another of our boys was Erich. We found it very hard to understand how he was in our army, because he was German, and we were fighting the Germans! I was there when he told our mother what had happened. He had been in the German army - he might even have been an officer - and one day, one of his friends, at the risk of his own life, warned him to get away as fast as he could. His friend had seen Erich's papers, and it had transpired that his grandmother or great grandmother was a Jewess. That was enough! - he and his family would be `arrested' and in due course taken to the `concentration camps.' Not many Jews came out of them alive. Erich managed to get away, but I never heard anything of his family.
I can remember so many of the soldiers who visited us - English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, North and South, and Americans, altho' we only had a few of them.
Soldiers' wives came to stay with us too - I remember three at once at one stage. The first one was Dot - she had her 21st birthday while she was with us. Another was Anne, a lovely girl. I don't know what age she was, but she was diagnosed as having T B and had to go home to England for further tests and then to go into a sanatorium. Her husband was given special leave to go with her. How long after I don't know, but Anne died of her T B. I still have a couple of letters she wrote just after she arrived home, and again from the sanatorium.
Convoys of army lorries filled with soldiers were common, but not many stopped on the way. I remember one occasion, however, when one did stop on our road. My brother and I came running in to tell our mother, and she and all the other women in the road came out to the soldiers with tea and bread and butter, sandwiches - anything they had. When they ran out of tea, they gave them milk, and when they ran out of milk, they gave them buttermilk, and the poor boys thought they were being poisoned - none of them had ever tasted buttermilk before. Not only that, they had no idea where they were!!!!!
I have wondered since if these soldiers might just have come back from Dunkirk. I do know that when they arrived back in England from Dunkirk the soldiers who were fit enough were put on trains and sent wherever space could be found for them.
To my brother and me the soldiers were very grown up, - but in fact, many of them would have been only eighteen or nineteen. The officers were a few years older, and the `Regulars', of course, were of all ages. The first thing most of them did when they came into the house was to look for my brother's comics - Beano, Dandy, and later in the war Hotspur, Rover, Champion and later, the Eagle; they couldn't wait to see what had happened since the previous one!!!!!
One Saturday, my mother received a letter from the mother of one of our `boys', asking for news of him. She said she hadn't heard for six weeks -- she didn't know if he was alive or dead, and did we have any knowledge of him? He had mentioned our name in the last letter, which was why she was writing.Needless to say, my mother wrote immediately to reassure her, but next day when that particular soldier arrived, my mother told him she wanted a word with him, which caused a high degree of hilarity among the boys already in the house. When asked, he said he had written home within a couple of weeks - well, maybe three - and couldn't believe it was so long, when he was told of his mother's letter. He was sat down immediately with a pen and paper to write home, and each of the others was asked when he had written (which rather took the grins off their faces). If it was within the week, he was allowed to relax, otherwise he also had to sit down and write home. Every Sunday thereafter, as each soldier arrived, he was asked when he had last written home, and if it was over a week, he had to write his letter before he could do anything else. The living room and the sitting room were full of them - all sitting writing, and often appealing for help with spelling. After they left Omagh, many of our boys wrote to us as well as their families.
War meant rationing, and it wasn't very long before many things disappeared from the shops. Sweets only came in occasionally, but when they did, they were sold out very quickly. From September each year, we had no sweets at all. Any that arrived were kept for Christmas, and my father saved his tobacco ration also. As a result, every soldier who came to our house had a bag of sweets or chocolate, the smokers got cigarettes or tobacco, and the non-smokers had writing paper and envelopes, or something similar, from the Christmas tree.
Food was adequate, even if not very exciting, but how my mother stretched it to feed everyone who came, I still don't know!
Baths - I don't know what the bathrooms were like in the camp, but our boys were very thrilled to be allowed to have a bath. Hot water was rationed - for a bath, one was not allowed more than five inches - twelve and a half centimeters - at the deep end, and a
line had to be drawn, so that everyone knew exactly where the five inch level was. Our bath never recovered!
Canteens.

Trinity church was Sunday evening, First Omagh Presbyterian church was Wednesday and I don't remember which night was the YMCA. Those were the three my mother worked in.
She would join the other helpers in First Omagh on Wednesday afternoons to prepare for the evening, and when we had finished our dinner after we came in from school, we would join her there, and play with the other children. It used to be great fun.
There would have been other canteens, of course, for I think I remember the town prided itself on having somewhere available for the soldiers on every night in the week. Trinity Church hall was requisitioned by the Army for the duration of the war.
Also, there were two cinemas, of course, and a ballroom.
I mentioned Jim joined the R A F. I remember the night he left. He came into our room to say goodbye - it was the first time I ever saw our mother crying - I hadn't even realized adults could cry until then.
He went to Canada for his training, and I remember the night he came home from there. Nobody looked round as he came thro' the back door, but I was watching my mother and aunt in the kitchen, and saw the blue sleeve. I went straight over the back of my chair, and if Jim hadn't reacted very quickly and caught me, I could have had quite a bad fall.
He flew Spitfires all thro', and seemed to lead a charmed life until almost the end of the war, when he crashed in Belgium behind enemy lines. His parents notified us he was missing. That was a bad time, but it didn't last too long, for just over a fortnight later we had word he was alive and relatively well. Long after, he told us what had happened
.
His plane was coming down out of control, not far behind the German lines. He said he could remember realizing he was going to crash into a tree, and putting his arm over his eyes in an attempt to protect them, which was daft, he said, for he didn't expect to survive anyway, and that was as much as he knew at the time. He learned later what happened then.
Belgians were working in the fields - slave labour - and before the Germans arrived, they had Jim out of the plane and hidden, his uniform off and in the plane, (altho' they made sure they kept his identity disc,) salvaged everything that they could use, and set the plane on fire. They even had handy scorched animal bones that they threw into it, so that when the Germans did arrive and searched, they had good reason to believe the pilot had burned with the plane, so didn't seek further for him.
After dark, they managed to get Jim to the nearest hospital - at the risk of their lives and the lives of their families and friends - for they had to wait to move him until after the curfew, when they would be shot out of hand if caught out of doors, while if they were found to be helping an Allied airman, everybody in the town might well have been killed outright, the lesser alternative being the concentration camps, where they were unlikely to survive anyway.
Jim's face had the most injuries, several bones having been broken, and these had to be set without anaesthetic, none being available. This done, his face was bandaged completely, as was most of the rest of him, and a story was prepared to account for him, They must have been able to forge papers for him, for the Germans checked the hospital daily and demanded every patient's details. It was a convent hospital run by nuns, but even they would not have escaped punishment, had he been discovered. Fortunately, he wasn't.
News of his 鈥榓rrival' spread very rapidly among the local people, and caused such excitement - they hadn't seen any Allies since Dunkirk - that a report had to be circulated saying he had died. So many people wanted to see him, it was creating a real security risk. None of the local people spoke English, and his French was of the schoolboy variety, but he said it improved rapidly. For entertainment, he taught the nuns and other patients to sing `It's a long way to Tipperary' and other songs in similar vein - at least, while there were no Germans within hearing.
Some fifteen days after he arrived the American Army did likewise, much to everyone's relief. As a parting gift the Germans bombed the town, and knowing he was a pilot, the nuns thought he would like to observe the enemy's techniques, so left him, well wrapped up, to watch from an upstairs window. When we asked what he did, he told us he gathered his blankets and his dignity around him, and departed to join the other patients in the cellars!
I may not remember the announcement of the beginning of the war in 1939, but I do remember the announcement of V E Day - Victory in Europe - in 1945. We had known it was coming, but not when, and the Government had announced that there would be no school on the day after it happened, so we had a very personal interest in it. We heard the news, and my brother and I ran to our teacher - who hadn't heard it - to tell her no school tomorrow. There were all sorts of celebrations, but everyone was very aware that we were still fighting in the East, and that the war would not be completely over until Japan had surrendered, Only three months later, we heard of a new type of bomb that had been used - only twice - and V J Day had arrived.
The war was truly over.
The jubilation was more muted this time, for the news of these bombs, and the pictures of the devastation they had caused were so horrifying, that no-one could really rejoice.
A new age had begun, and things would never be the same again.
A. McC. Monteith.

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