大象传媒

The German Air Force bombed Belfast only twice
during the 1939-1945 war. Our family was bombed out on both visits! On Easter Sunday 1941 a land mine (a bomb on a parachute) fell on the bottom of our road, killing everyone in the first six houses and destroying most of the rest of our road. We were sheltering under a table in the kitchen and were unhurt. We fled to the Divis Mountains, the hills surrounding Belfast, and spent the night in the heather watching and listening to the harbour burn. The next morning, after the "all Clear" siren, we walked back into the city to the reception areas set up for those like us whose homes were
destroyed. In the panic and the crowds my sister Bernadette (aged 7)was lost. Leaving my mother and baby Arthur and toddlers Jim and Teresa at the reception area, I went to search for her among the crowds streaming down the from the hill; fortunately she had been picked up by a neighbour.
That night, Easter Monday, we went to stay with my mothers great-aunt, a midwife who lived in a grand house on the Crumlin Road. And so on their second visit the Germans blew up our refuge, we were now truly homeless.

Our maternal grandmother was a market trader, with lots of contacts al over Ireland. She arranged for us to go a farm near Newry in County Armagh, owned by a Mr Toy. He gave us a barn to sleep, with a cold water tap outside for washing, I can't remember how we cooked. We could only take this for a few days, granny moved us to a different farm. I slept on a truckle bed, sharing a room with two brothers in their thirties. On my first night I was desperate for a pee, one of the men handed me an empty Ostermilk( a powdered baby food) tin telling me to pee in this. My embarressment was overcome by shock when he opened the window and emptied my effort over the sill!

We then moved to a cottage with an earth floor in Garvaghy Lane in Portadown, County Down. It had a kitchen living room with an open hearth for cooking and two small bedrooms. It was on its own, up a lane a quarter of a mile from the main road., and the same distance from the water pump; the daily job for Bernadette and I to fetch the water for cooking and washing. The rent was two shilling and sixpence (12.5 pence). We thought it was paradise, surrounded by fields, on the edge of the town, with the sight of the Newforge Meat Packing Factory across the pasture.

Our father was working in England, as at this time there was no work for Catholics in Northern Ireland. Mother had refused to go because of the intense bombing in England in the early war years; she feared for our safety. After ten months living in this primitive cottage, she decided that" if we were going to be bombed out in Ireland, we might as well be with your father in England" In retrospect, our paradise must have been hell for her, having lost a modern house with garden and indoor toilet and bathroom to the Lutwaffe. So in February 1942 we set off on the great adventure of emigration to England (accompanied by mothers sewing machine!)

Evacuation was the fate of thousands of children in Britain during the war years, sent to live in the safety of country villages to escape the bombs, the majority without their parents. We were the lucky evacuees, our mother was always with us.

John Donaldson

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