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This story was submitted to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ peoples war with the permission of John Atchison. The interviewer was Brian Morgan. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

My earliest recollection of living in Belfast was of a huge Air raid Shelter just outside the front door of the house where I was raised. My mother , sister and I lived with my grandmother in one of the little terraced houses in the Shankill area of west belfast.

Halfway along ourstreet there was a piece of waste ground referred to , by my Granny, as The wreckage. I never understood why it was called that but I was continually told not to playe there. On the occasions when I got caught disobeying my Gran I was confined to the house for the rest of the day.

One day whilst playing in The Wreckage I discovered a piece of metal pipe sticking up form the ground, so I started digging. What I unearthed was a gas iron, rusty, but still recognisible. I carried it home and showed it to Gran. She asked me to show her exactly where I’d found it . When we returned home she began to clean it and I noticed that she was crying.

The iron was hers, lost when a German bomb had destroyed her home and killed her son, his wife and her baby. Gran was the only survivor, found after two days buried under the rubble. She had taken cover under the stairs and that had saved her life. She suffered a lot during the two days she was trapped but never talked about it . Her face was marked in lots of places , marks that never went away. My uncle John who lost his life that night was her only son and my mother named me after him. When I was older I was told the story of that awful night and given a ring that he had worn. Eventhough it was damaged the engraving on it was still clear. I still have it today.

Mackies Foundry was a Munitions Factory during the war and the little streets of’ two up two down’ dwellings that surrounded it were always at risk from German bombers. My mother worked there making artillery shells. In later years as a teenager I examined a map of Belfast and marked the positions of all the other wreckages in our area. It showed a little line across the Shankill area heading towards Mackies. Wether or not the factory was hit is still a mystery . What is sure that a lot of innocent people died that night.

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