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This story is by Dorothy Lowry, and has been added to the site with her 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 Belfast Waterworks and its reservoir and the nearby Cliftonville cricket grounds must have excited the interest of some of the German bomber pilots for the little streets in that district got surely more than their fair share of attention. They were hit with explosives, fire bombs and even machine gun fire.

In a small kitchen house, huddled closely under a table are a young couple, and the girl’s mother. Electricity is gone and they have already listened for a couple of hours to explosions and the screech of swooping planes.

The young wife is fast developing labour pains and is crying. They know that a couple of hundred yards away lives a midwife. Can they call her in? There is no phone: it’s unlikely that she or anyone else in these streets has a phone. Would she be able to reach them? Would she try?

The young father-to-be goes out into the street. What a terrible scene! The only lights are moonlight and flames from the burning house down the way. There are terrified groups huddled together, scuttling from the danger in the house they’ve left and trying to find a neighbour, any neighbour whose house might offer some safety. No fire brigade has arrived. There is no-one to advise or direct. Some children in night clothes are carried or are clinging to parents. The crying, beseeching and screaming is louder than the sporadic plomp ,plomp, plomp of the anti-aircraft guns.

The young man picks his way over and around piles of bricks and debris as fast as he can. He has little time to notice the eerie sight of two houses which, without their front walls, stand straight and otherwise look untouched. The bedrooms are as they were — pictures on the walls, clock on the bedside table, bedclothes and pillow ready. The joists are plain to see and floor rugs unmoved. A weird sight, exactly as if the front of a doll’s house had been opened.

Our hero hurries on. Will the midwife come out of her home? Yes, willingly! But being less nimble, she has to traverse some of the obstacles on hands and knees, in peril of more masonry falls, and in fear of the screeching terror that threatens to swoop from the sky at chimney pot level.

And, into this chaos, by the light of a small torch, a healthy baby boy is born.

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