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This story is taken from an interview with Joe Power at Our Lady’s Nursing Home, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I would have been about 8 [in 1939]. Playing hand-ball, up against the wall. [The school I attended was] Sacred Heart, St Columban’s in Glenview Street.
The Easter Tuesday night, I was round in the … we shifted everything in out old house. We lived in Mayfair Street in the Old Park. When that blitz came on, we had to run round to the Parochial Hall in Grace St. That’s only from here to the end of that building. In through the back entry. You know? Out of the house, into the entry and through the neighbour’s kitchen to the Parochial Hall. Sacred Heart Parochial Hall. Well, there was nowhere safe. The bombs were dropping. This boy, his wake was down the bottom of the street. And he, a land mine hit his house at the bottom of the street, wiped out the whole the bottom of the street. So it did.
I lived in the ... Coffin could be fit though the letterbox ... Just lying all over the place. The place was wrecked. Ballymoney street, Ballymena Street, Ballyclare Street. The Old Park. It was all wiped out in one night.

Oh, it did indeed [shatter the community]. Protestants were racing over from Ballyclare Street, the Bally streets into the Parochial hall. You know? And you were suddenly knee-deep in urine. The place was so full. Not hundreds, but you could have got a couple of hundred in it at least. And everybody was urinating everywhere. You were up to your knees in urine. You know?

[Air Raid Wardens]
Well, you really got nothing, so you didn’t. You just headed to that spot. You thought the Parochial Hall was safe. Some of it was underground. The boiler. And you just headed for there, like you thought it was safe. You know?

People, lots of people killed in it [the blitz]. They didn’t really work together [cross-community], they just looked after themselves. Fend for yourself. I remember going down to the Salvation Army. There was a library down in Old Park. And the Salvation Army was in it. I remember going down there for a cup of tea. 3 or 4 of us, down there for a cup of tea and corned-beef sandwiches. They just handed them out. You just went in, and they gave you …

[radio?]
I didn’t have time for it much. I was mostly out digging in the rubble. Just, any prock — anything worth money.

[find anything?]
No, not a big lot.

[looking for] Jewellery and money.

[incendiaries?]
You were warned not to lift anything there.

[Scared to touch anything?]
Oh aye. Incendiary bombs in the area.

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