大象传媒

This story is by Nancy Blaikie, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The story was collected by Joyce Gibson, transcribed by Elizabeth Lamont and added to the site by Bruce Logan.
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The night of the big air raid on Belfast my Father was on duty in our neighbourhood. We had been wakened by the sirens and gathered in the back kitchen of our house. Preparations had already been made. The window into the back yard was covered with a wooden shutter reinforced with metal advertisements, the type which used to hang on every railway station between Bangor and Belfast. One was for an Australian health drink and another was for tea.
The large table was pushed against the wall: the leaf of the table was put on top to reinforce it, then a couple of bed irons, and finally on top went an old horsehair mattress. Another mattress went underneath the table and my Mother, sister, brother and I huddled there.

We could hear the German planes flying overhead in waves. My Father came in and took us out to see them. They were dropping flares and it was as bright as day: the planes seemed so close. We were told to go back to our den under the table and it didn鈥檛 seem very long before there was a mighty series of explosions getting closer and closer. One sounded so close we thought the house had been hit. I was very frightened and then I heard my Mother laugh. When I looked at her she was covered in soot and so were we all. The nearest bomb of the stick, which the Germans had off-loaded on Bangor, had done the best chimney-sweeping job our chimney had ever had. We were sitting in what looked about six inches of soot and we all looked like Kentucky Minstrels. I guess our laughter had more than a hint of hysteria in it. Every window in the front of the house was gone: there was a lump of shrapnel imbedded in the front door, but we were unhurt.

The night the bombs dropped in Bangor not everyone was as lucky as we were in Bangor West. The stick which blew in our windows, every single bomb of that stick fell in a garden, and the last one fell in the sea. Windows blew in and in some houses ceilings came down, but no-one sustained any injury in our area. However, people in Hazeldene near the golf club were killed and some badly injured. It was all such a matter of luck.

After one of the big raids, one of my brother鈥檚 friends arrived at our house on his bicycle, carrying an incendiary bomb. His aunt had a farm near Belfast and this bomb had landed and failed to explode so he brought it to our house so we could explode it and practice our fire drills with the stirrup pump and bucket of sand. Luckily, it proved more difficult than he had imagined. My brother and his friends, all supposedly sensible twelve-year-olds, did everything they could think of to explode that bomb. At last, in desperation, they took it in turns to throw the hatchet at it. That did it! Suddenly it exploded in the middle of our back lawn, a twelve-foot high pillar of blindingly white incandescent light. That really did it. Neighbours appeared on either side, and we all quickly discovered that you can鈥檛 fight a phosphorus fire with a stirrup pump, even if you could get close. It was rather hot. By this time my Mother had appeared and she was not amused, particularly as her favourite peony rose was the main casualty. We had to leave the fire to burn itself out. We were in disgrace, the bringer of the bomb was told never to darken our door again. We didn鈥檛 appreciate until much later how lucky we all had been and we thought that what had made Mother so angry was the loss of her plant! And, as time passed, and no grass would grow where the fire had been, Father had to dig out a flower bed to hide the burnt grass, nothing much would grow.

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