大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War site by Eileen Parker of the SEELB staff on behalf of Noel Mack and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was born in late 1938. We lived in the Castlereagh Road area and I remember a tremendous sense of fear of being bombed. The only protection we had was a strong steel table, which we hid under and where my brother and I slept. During the Blitz a landmine landed near Loopland Drive but did not explode. Two houses were destroyed in Houston Park.
My grandmother lived in Kircubbin and we often went down there. She was able to keep us supplied with country butter. An Allied aircraft crashed in a bog nearby and the crew was buried in a local graveyard. They were only in their twenties, from England, Canada and Poland.
There was a P.O.W. camp in Orangefield Primary School and we used to look through the fence.The prisoners were quite friendly. They were Italian, I think.
In 1944 the American troops waiting for D-Day were parked along the roadways. A friendly negro soldier who was driving a jeep, gave me some chewing gum.It was the first time I had seen a negro and the first time I had seen chewing gum. I often wonder if he survived the war.
An elderly neighbour gave us Kit-kat chocolate occasionally, which we devoured, not realising that she must have saved up our ration points for us.
When the war ended a German submarine was brought to Belfast docks. Our next door neighbour took me down to see it. We were allowed on board and saw how small it was inside.

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