大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Billy McKnight at the Ballymena Servicemen鈥檚 Association, 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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The Easter Sunday night and the Easter Tuesday night would have been about the 2 biggest raids. But, what they were after with the Waterworks was the docks.
We were stationed, after we done the training I was stationed up the Cave hill road. And we were in a direct run there right down to the docks. And there was a cruiser in getting repaired at that time, and they think they were after it, you see? Because they had AA guns on it and they were firing at the planes. And they had also an AA gun on the top of Gallaghers in York Street. It鈥檚 not there now either. And they had some around the Cave Hill. And then you had all these auld barrage balloons. They put them up, you see, as soon as they 鈥� We used to get these, what you鈥檇 call 鈥� Whenever the German planes were to cross the west coast of Scotland or England, we got what you鈥檇 call a Yellow. A light. And that meant you had to get up and get the full gear on and mount the MGs. And then after, if they came on you got a red. That was when the sirens was going. And if they turned back you got a White light, that was the 鈥渁ll clear鈥�.
They would have come on the phone. A fellow would have rung up and said to you 鈥淭here鈥檚 a yellow through鈥�, and then you were out like the hammers with all the full gear on you. Waiting to see where there they were going to drop. Sometimes there was, I mind one time the guns went off before the sirens went off. It depended. They weren鈥檛 just too well.

[civilians evacuating to the hills]
At night? They used to go there when it was beginning to get dusk. They went up into the hills and the Mountains round about and the fields. And they stayed there til the morning.

[burglary]
They just locked the door. You got boys breaking into them, too. That was one of main things in London, the London blitz. There was a crowd of boys went, as soon as the sirens started they bulldozed into jewellers鈥� shops.
Well, there wasn鈥檛 so much of it in Belfast. Would have been very little.
There was an old boy I knew down in Dover street, and he worked at Milvilza, the Funeral undertakers. He conducted the funerals, you know? There was 3 or 4 men done. And he went down on Easter Sunday and the whole place was burning. Auld Victor went in and let all the horses out. Of course, you wouldn鈥檛 get them out when there was too much smoke, he just turned them out into Townsend St and away they went, galloping all over the place. To get them out, you know?

[swimming pool]
Ah, that鈥檚 where they took the bodies. They used the Falls Rd Bath to identify hem. You see, there was a whole lot of places. There was in York st, York st mill was hit and it fell in the clutter of wee houses. There was a whole load of wee houses there, wee 2-bedroom houses. And then there was some of the air raid shelters they built at that time. And they had about a 6-inch or 9-inch roof of concrete on them, but they only had single brick sides. And the sides went in like that, and the thing came down. Things like that happened, you know?

And then they started, they evacuated a big lot of them as far out as Lisburn and Magheragall and Cherryton. To halls, they鈥檇 sleep in halls at night. And then into their work in the morning, if they had work.

[Derry was bombed]
Aw, but that was after Belfast. They think that was some boy going home, forgot about them. It was the same with Dublin 鈥� they dropped a couple on Dublin.

[That wasn鈥檛 very well reported]

Aye, it was [covered up].

[Somebody way off course]

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