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I was seven years old when war broke out. We were living off the Cliftonville Road in Kelvin Parade. We had only moved there during the summer months; before that we had lived in Ulsterville Avenue off the Lisburn Road. I can remember the day so well. We were dressed ready to go to church for 11.30 and my father had turned on the wireless to hear the Prime Minister speak. The day was so dark (despite it being early September) that we had the light on in the living room. As I remember we were all standing. It was as if doom was looming over our heads. I can’t remember the rest of the day.

By this time I was attending the Belfast Model School. We were issued with gas masks and had drills at school when we had to wear them. The school authorities were worried about what would happen if the school was bombed during school hours — so they had drills when we were dispersed around the neighbouring houses. Two other girls and I were sent to a house where there was a little old lady living I think on her own. We sat very neatly on the settee and behaved extremely well. I can’t recall how we knew the ‘alert’ was over. It was years later that I thought that if the school was hit then so would the surrounding houses.

The school was encouraging us all to buy National Savings Stamps. For some reason my father did not quite approved of these (I don’t know why) and he opened Post Office Savings Accounts for me and my older sister in the local Post Office. I still have that account!

My father worked for a big linen firm and he was sometimes on duty fire watching. He was in the Home Guard and at the weekends they would frequently be on ‘manoeuvres’. I can remember him in his uniform so well. It was black, and as he had gone grey in his early 20s and had a very fair skin, it definitely was not his colour. Nowadays you always see pictures of the home guard wearing khaki, and I only discovered recently that they were originally called the Local Defence Volunteers and that was when they wore a black uniform. I found this out when I saw a small exhibition in Lisburn Museum, on Lisburn’s role in WW2, when they had a black uniform on display.

All sorts of strange things were happening before our eyes. Black out curtains had to be obtained as you would be in serious trouble if a chink of light could be seen coming from your windows when the lights were on inside. The ARP men patrolled the streets at night to make sure all was well. A lot of people stuck paper tape on windows to prevent glass shards flying all over the place in the event of an explosion nearby. They usually just had a plain check pattern, but some people devised very elaborate patterns. There were no street lights at night and if you were out in the dark you took a torch so that you make sure you would you would not trip over something. You also had to make sure that the beam was pointed down at the ground just a few feet in front of your feet.

We were never officially evacuated, but at some stage my sister and I were sent to Ballymena to stay with a friend of our granny, who had a late teenage son and daughter. This lady used to make lovely dolls clothes for my sister’s favourite dolls. I can remember she knitted a lovely red coat for one doll and crocheted round the edge with white angora wool. It looked like a fur trimming. I could already knit when we went there, but I always had trouble with rib and she taught me to do that. We went to Ballymena Model School but I can’t remember anything about it. On the way back from school we passed a blacksmiths and I used to love just standing there and watching him work. I think I must have been very homesick there because when my mother came to visit us, I went into the bathroom and wouldn’t come out until she said she would take us home. I think I always thought that you were only safe with your mother. So we were back in Belfast in time for the Blitz!

We had no air raid shelters either at home or in the street. And no way could we have fitted under the stairs. We got under the dining room table and a settee was put on its front so that the top of the back was against the table. This was on the wall furthest from the window. Rugs and blankets were draped over this construction. I think a mattress was put up against the window. My father kept saying that he could hear things landing on the roof and he would keep disappearing up to the attics. And my mother kept calling him to come down again. There was an awful lot of noise of all sorts — I couldn’t make out what was happening — I just wanted it to stop. The house shook every now and again. I suspect that the biggest shake was when the land mine dropped right in the middle of the main road.

Eventually the ‘all clear’ went and we crept out. There was debris all over the place. My sister (who wore glasses all the time) had left them on the mantelpiece and they were still there covered with a layer of dust. Someone was looking after her.

After the raid was over, we got dressed in a haphazard sort of way. I can remember that I was just about to put my shoes on when my mother stopped me. The windows in the hall had been broken and my shoes were full of bits of glass. Eventually we started to make our way down the Cliftonville Road going to the Model School where there was a Reception Centre. I can remember piles of grey blankets and the desks pushed up against the walls, but nothing else about what happened there. It was quite a short walk there, but when we came to Oldpark Presbyterian Church there was a huge crater in the road! Worst still, there had been a row of 4 shops opposite and they had vanished — just a pile of rubble left. There was a butchers, a cake shop, a sweet shop and a Post Office! And it was in that Post Office that my entire life savings were deposited! We had to climb over the rubble to get on down the road. My next memory is of walking down Ulsterville Avenue going to my grannies house. I don’t know how we got there but I do remember that we were passing people who were obviously going to their work and they were clean and we were dirty.

I can’t recall actually getting to grannies or what happened next but my next memory is being in a street in Lisburn — I presume we got there on a bus. We were walking down the street and my mother had my hand and suddenly I was sick. What happened next is a mystery but somehow we ended up in Dromara at a lovely farm house. If you have to be moved to the country nine is a perfect age because you are old enough to take it all in and remember it.

It was a mixed farm — a bit of everything. Although they had a Ferguson tractor they still used horses to plough some fields. They had a milking herd of cattle and two bulls (a red one and a black one which was younger and ready to defend its space). There were also sheep, pigs, hens, ducks and geese. I was interested in everything that was happening on the farm. In the stable, where the hay was put out for the horses to feed was where one of the farm cats decided to have her kittens. The horse still ate the hay and I used to wonder how it avoided accidentally eating a kitten as well. But it was probably nice and warm in there.

They also killed their own pigs for their own consumption. A slaughter man would come to do the job. As I said I was interested in all the activities and was waiting to see what all these preparations were for. The men were trying to get rid of me but I was slow to take the hint — they never actually said what was about to happen, but when they sent me on a useless errand I realised that they did want me to go, so I made myself scarce! The carcase was hung, cut and cured at the farm. I can’t remember how long that took. The farmer’s wife made her own butter. The milk fresh from the cows was put through a separator to get the cream. It didn’t taste like cream to me at all because it wasn’t sweet. When the week’s cream had been collected it was emptied into a churn, and then the hard work started. The churn was heavy and was turned with a big handle and hard to get started moving; we used to take it in turns. It was lovely to be able to say you helped make the butter and pat it in to shapes. It was good exercise

One of the neighbouring farmers grew flax, and I had never seen anything as lovely as flax in flower. But when it came to pulling it I couldn’t even pull one stalk complete with root although the farm workers could pull whole handfuls at one go. When the farmer and his wife went away for a few days my sister was left in charge of the incubator (which was in their bedroom) and her main job was to remove the broken shells and any fatalities! And make sure the newly hatched ones were looked after. I looked after feeding the free range hens up in a field behind the house. Harvest time was great — I think I fancied being in a hay field and helping to rake the hay. Also helping to fix the stooks of corn.

A country school was very different from the city schools. There were usually three classes in each room. I liked that because if I didn’t like what my class was doing I just listened to another one. The boys had allotments in the school grounds but I don’t know what the girls did at that time — I suppose knitting or sewing. Anyway I thought it was unfair that I couldn’t help at the allotments. Walking home was lovely as we walked mostly through fields.

My father was still working in Belfast and would come down to us at the weekends. He worked for York Street Flax Spinning Co and it was badly damaged during the raids. They were looking for somewhere where they could reinstall the spinners and finally settled for Lurgan. So in the middle of October we moved to Lurgan. At that time the country schools had different summer holidays from town schools. In the country you had shorter time off in the summer but had another week later in October to help with (I think) the potatoe harvest. By that time we were in Lurgan and I had lost a week’s holiday! And I have never forgotten that.

I was told we were going to live on Lough Road, and I imagined somewhere like Bangor where you just went down a short street from the railway station and there was the lough. But when we got there, there was no sign of the lough at all! We had some rooms in a big house, which had a baby grand piano in the drawing room and two other reception type rooms. We had as a living room — the library! My sister thought she was in paradise as she read books by the shelf full. We shared the kitchen etc with the owners, and had two bedrooms. There was lovely Victorian furniture, a desk and a chaiselongue, two library chairs and a lovely round table; and the room was so big that you still had lots of room. I thought it was just perfect. We lived here for two years. There was a huge garden and an orchard as well as a lot of other fruit bushes and a kitchen garden — and bamboo which I had never seem before and I though it was a pity there were no pandas living there.

The house had a huge basement where the local ARP people met. I had learnt to ride a bicycle by this time, but my mother thought I should not be using it in the winter, so it was left in the basement turned upside down. There was a red setter dog there as well and it took a fancy to the saddle of the bike and had good fun chewing it! The bicycle was taken to the local shoemaker and he did a grand job of repairing it with industrial felt, which was used to make boot covers for some industrial workers. My bike still has that saddle. The boot maker also made clogs with wooden soles and leather uppers. They were great for workers who worked in wet areas as the soles were very thick.

On the roads there were all sorts of ‘barricades’ to prevent the ‘enemy’ getting along the roads. I think they were called tank traps. They were huge concrete blocks about a yard wide and about as tall as a man. They were placed two on one side of the road (they were joined by metal poles). Then a short distance there would be two on the other side of the road and then another two on the first side. So that the traffic would have to go very slow and take a zig-zag path. On some smaller roads which had a slope, there were oil drums filled with concrete lying on their sides along the pavement edge. There was a substantial barrier at the bottom to keep them all in order. If the ‘enemy’ arrived these drums would be liberated and that would stop all traffic.

Eventually the US Army arrived in Lurgan. They looked so alien to us. We got to know a few of them very well. I think they liked visiting us as both my parents had been to USA several times, so they would understand exactly what they were missing about home. One time one of them brought a large metal can the size of one of our big glass sweet jars. It was a lovely gold colour and had a beautiful pattern on it. I thought it was full of sweets — but it wasn’t. It was full of lemons for my mother! I think she must have told them what she missed most, and she was a very happy mother. We kept making new US friends and one of the soldiers we knew was sent home as he was ill, and his girl friend used to write letters to my mother keeping her up to date on his progress. He had cancer of the tongue and the treatment was sticking radium needles into the tongue! She said he had so enjoyed visiting us. The letters were reduced in size and copied in some way and they were censored.

The air raid sirens went off on rare occasions and one time there were a couple of US soldiers with us. My mother told me years later, that they had remarked to her about my reaction to the sound. I must have looked scared stiff. I never liked the sound of a siren, even when the fire brigades used then later; but I didn’t know my reaction was so obvious. I was also told by people a wee bit older than me, that during the raids on Belfast they would go out and look at the sky over the city and it would be glowing red even at that distance.

I do not recall us being short of any particular food. I think we just accepted that that was the way it was. Living in a country town was probably an advantage as you usually knew someone who kept hens! We did miss butter though. My sister used to beat our butter ration along with most of the margarine and some milk to make a very acceptable substitute for butter to put on the bread.

Living in a country town was very different from living in Belfast. Everyone knew who everyone else was. Also because there were no street lights you could have a great view of the heavens on a clear night. I soon knew all the brightest stars and the constellations. This is one thing I miss nowadays.

When the war started at first, my mother’s sister, who was married and living in USA, wanted my mother to send us over to her to be safe. I was really worried that we would be sent there; and there was also talk of living at a country school — but I’m glad to say that neither suggestion happened. I always felt that nothing terrible could happen if you were still with your parents.

If you should have to live through such an upheaval; then nine is the perfect age. Someone else takes care of all the problems and you can enjoy the good experiences. And if your family is still in one piece, that’s all that matters.

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