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This story was given to Conor Garrett and transcribed by volunteer Wendy Cornett

Double Evacuation

ALBERT BAW AND JOE MCCLINTOUGH

Q - You had a sort of double evacuation didn't you? Where were you evacuated from?

That's correct. I was evacuated from Gibraltar to England, and then in 1944, from England to Northern Ireland. The double evacuation was actually transpired because the kind of life that the evacuees were living in London was actually beyond comprehension. Bombing continuously day and night, our life consisted of 6.00 in the evening going up to the underground stations with blankets and pillows to sleep; 6:00 in the morning we had to get out because the trains would start to carry the passengers to work, so there was no way they could keep us down there after that. That lasted for 3 years. We had to walk the streets to get to the underground and at the time, I was just coming onto 18 or 19.

Q - Were you allowed to work?

Yes, we were allowed to work. My first job in England was in a place called Crystal Palace, making torch batteries. I earned £1 a week, working from 8.00 am until about 5.00 pm.

Q - Why the jump then to Northern Ireland? How did that come about?

Because of the bombing it came very prominent to the government in England and the government in Gibraltar that it was an atrocity to keep us in London, especially in London where the large amount of bombing was. They had evacuated people from London already, but we were put there about roughly 20,000 of us, all round London, in different big hotels that were acquired by the government. So what happened, was that it got to be too many and they had to shift us. At that time it was like an adventure to us, but for really old people it certainly wasn’t; it was very difficult for them.

Q — Where did you finish up in Northern Ireland then?

I finished up in a camp in Broughshane, up near Ballymena. I also married a girl from Broughshane in 1945; she was my first wife, who died 9 years ago. About two years ago, I married another young lady, who is from just outside Ballymena.

Q - Joe, you were a bus conductor, isn’t that right? Were you commissioned to go on the bus with some of these young evacuees?

Yes, that’s right. They were working in Ballymena; I think they worked in the Braidwater Spinning Mill; lots of them worked there. I was attached to the Ballymena bus depot, so then we went out to collect these people and bring them into Ballymena.

Q — Did they have to pay? Did you have to give them a ticket?

Oh yes, but they usually had weekly tickets. They were very nice people and we got on very well with them. They were very mannerly and easy to get on with. Sometimes, we went up at night to the camps to bring a bit of entertainment there. I wasn’t a musician but I played an old mandolin. There was also another fellow who played the violin. So we went up there and had a bit of a party there. The fun was good and it was maybe 12 or 1 o’clock before we left the camps.

Q — Did you make a lot of friends there?

Oh we did, and there are some of the Gibraltar people still living in our village in Broughshane. My friend, Mr Baw here, I think he is the only one from there who married an Irish girl; at least that’s the only one I can remember from the camps. There were lots of the girls however, who married the men from Northern Ireland. But strange to say, Mr Baw’s first wife, I knew her before he ever knew her; I actually used to have a wee bit of a crush on her.

Q — Albert, did you ever dream that the world would go round like this and you would finish up marrying a girl from Broughshane, and then another from Ballymena?

No, never did I believe it would happen.

Q — Do you ever go back to Gibraltar?

Only for a visit now and again, but I won’t go back to live.

Q — Has it changed?

Oh yes, it has changed quite a bit actually. To be honest with you, the two visits that I have paid on holiday, I was very disappointed, because it seemed to have become very commercialised; there are too many strangers about. I consider myself an Ulster man now.

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