大象传媒

This story was given to Conor Garrett and transcribed by volunteer Mairead Gilheany

Mabelle Anderson

My name is Mabelle Anderson and at the beginning of the war I married and my husband was working in Liverpool. Later on he was transferred to Derry. Most of our war years were in Derry and then he was called up for the army and I came home and lived with my parents on the Lisburn Road.

Life in Liverpool was dreadful. We were living in the outer defences and when we were raided at Christmas the hedges were burning, the trees were burning. Half of the wall came down out of the house. However things were much easier in Derry. The only raid we had there was the night we arrived so we thought Jerry was following us.

There were terrible food shortages in Liverpool. Milk was watered down until it scarcely resembled milk and that was one of the biggest things that struck me when I came here - the nice cream on top of the bottle that we had. Most people had some kind of connection that meant they got a little bit extra, though not very much. In Liverpool you barely got your rations.

It was nice to be back among my relations and my first child was born in Derry and when my husband was called up she was about 6 months. One day was quite funny. We lived on the Lisburn Road and Adele was about 9 months at the time and she was sitting up, smiling at anyone who would smile at her and when I turned the corner onto the main road there was a huge convoy of American troops coming in as far as you could see. She was giggling, there was a hold-up of the traffic and it came to a complete standstill. They started to whistle at her and she played up and was quite friendly. One of the chaps started to throw an orange into the pram. The others all thought this was great fun and to my amazement I ended up with a pram full of 24 oranges which we hadn鈥檛 seen for a very long time 鈥� lovely big Jaffa oranges. I took them home and shared them out with any neighbours who had a child. It was a time when everybody shared. I think if that was to happen now, people would be trying to sell the oranges to someone, but in those days there was a general spirit of helping each other.

My husband had four unmarried aunts and they ran the Botanic Gardens Post Office. English soldiers had been drafted in here to wait for D- Day. They were bored because they were sitting around waiting and it was tedious. So they would go into the Post Office to send coded messages to their parents of how they had arrived here. The aunts were very good to them and if they took a fancy to some of them they would say 鈥淐ome here on Friday night鈥�. So every Friday night there would have been at least 7 or 8 big soldiers would turn up. I was able to leave my baby with my mother and father and my sister in laws went down with me and we would have had great fun. We would have a sing-song around the piano and we played games. They had a great long lounge and we would play carpet bowls which was great fun. It was hilarious. How the aunts fed them I am not quite sure but they always had something for supper. It wasn鈥檛 food they were after 鈥� they were so glad to get out of camp. My sister-in-law married one of them who came from Sheffield. There was that caring for other people which has sadly disappeared.

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