大象传媒

Message 2 - Kids at War

Posted on: 04 November 2003 by Charlemont

I spent my childhood in a very poor working class district of Belfast. I have several vivid memories of WW2, particularly the day before it started, 2/9/39. I was 8 years old and was playing in the street near where my brother was standing chatting with his friends. He was a member of the Naval Reserve and I heard my mother calling his name and the sound of her voice startled me. I knew there was something wrong. She was waving an envelope and my brother walked towards her and opened it. By then she was crying, wiping her face on her apron. I rushed along to find out what was the matter and heard her say, "It's your calling up papers". I think I grew up a lot on that day. Things were never the same again.

In quick time my father and other brother were sent across the water, one to build airfields and the other to work in a factory. This happened to a lot of men at the time and so my mother and I were left on our own.

On the night of the big Blitz a neighbour took us in and I spent the night under stairs in a dark smelly coalhole, hearing such loud noises and all the men kept rushing out and in, fighting fires and helping the emergency forces. There were quite a lot of bombs dropped in the vicinity. We were only allowed out of the coalhole to go to the toilet and then you could see the whole street was lit up, a bright orange glow, flares I think. I was very frightened especially as the women kept praying and crying. Thankfully children like myself dozed on and off, despite the noises.

I didn't go to school for a couple of weeks. The teachers couldn't get in and besides the whole city was in turmoil for a while. So it was like a holiday and we had a great time playing on the mounds of rubble and rummaging among the debris for any treasures we could find. I remember bringing home a heavy ledger which my mother returned to the local shopkeeper. It was his book of accounts. HIs shop had been bombed.

When school re-started we redoubled our war efforts. We were urged to buy National Savings stamps and every Monday I would bring my 6d for a stamp. We learned to 'make do and mend', we knitted socks for sailors, made blankets out of rags, saved our cardboard mild bottle tops and made wool circles, then sewed them together to make mats. We were encouraged to Holiday at Home and the local play centre (does anyone rememer the hut in the Hammer?) used to put on displays during the summer and we children put on gymnastic displays and exercises with skipping ropes and hoops. And many more things. We did air raid practices and sat in our gasmasks, horrible sweaty things that stuck to your face.

We were luckier than a lot of people in the UK. We had only two Blitzes. Our morale was kept up by being reminded that Germany was being bombed daily so 'imagine what effect it was having - we knew how bad it had been for us after only TWO raids.

My memories of the war are nearly all sad and miserable, no daddy, no big brothers. But when they did get leave it was joy for a short while. But we did know those who were killed in the forces. My brother's best mate who had been called up for the Navy on the same day, was drowned about a year later. His mother never forgave my brother, she blamed him for encouraging her son to join HMS Caroline (as the people called the Naval Reserve in Belfast). My brother never forgot his friend Geordie.

The end of the war was equally memorable. VE day was my 14th birthday. So I started the war as a child and finished it on the fringes of adulthood. A few months later I had left school and was working in the local shirt factory, making shirts for the RAF.