大象传媒

As the Second World War progressed and the nightly bombing raids got worse my mother continued cycling up and down the long wiry cinder track which skirted through ploughed fields to her place of work, Middlesex Colony, comprising villas and pavillions, placed not far short of St.Albans City, on the outskirts of London.
The majority of the population were extremely unsettled by the advent of the Second World War, not least because it was not long since they had long endured 'a war to end all wars' namely the First World War.
She of course was not resident in Britain at that time, being born in 1908, in Donegal,Ireland.
Her previous experience of war was determined at home in Ireland.She would have been just twelve or thirteen years of age when a gang of IRA men surrounded the family home on a small plot of land on the side of a mountain Crok Mor, and with guns waving demanded their surrender and capitulation to them as collaborators of an opposing army. They had my mothers family down as Free Staters supporting De Valera's agreement to the Treaty proposal for the division of Ireland into the six Counties of Ulster and the twenty six counties of the Republic.
During the 1916 uprising in Ireland there were divided loyalties among the population as to the rights and wrongs of taking on the Government of Great Britain, in a bid for freedom and independence of the whole country, for the first time in centuries. Government forces would be far superior in discipline and materials it was argued and how could a disparate,poorly soldiered riff-raff motley gang take on the great might of the British Empire.Of course there was great sympathy in the country for this foolhardy gang. The underdogs were attempting to right the wrongs dealt out to generations of nationalist people. In their ranks were the new legislators of Ireland's freedom, the poets and writer's who were going to determine a new future for a fledgeling country.
Meeting a greater force they were dispersed to the far corners of Ireland ill disposed to survive.
The people took pity on them, succoured them in their great travail over mountains and valleys little to eat or drink they put themselves at the mercy of the mountain folk. Hardly revered they were put up in crofts and dwelling places in unlikely places the King's men found hard going.
This war led directly on to the following Civil War when again loyalties were stretched on both sides. It was little wonder that one did not understand who was friend or foe, who was an IRA man and who was not.
My mother told me that they took men in to stay who were unknown to the children, I suppose they were at their last gasp. Warned that if anyone were to approach them in the morning on their way to school, not to tell anybody of the foreign presence in their house, until they reached the school gates and not even then. It could have been that a neighbour got wind of this and wishing them ill 'touted' on their activities.
Whatever the case it could have been a harbinger for what followed. For following on their support for suffering souls who were being pursued and whether it was the unprovoked incident of the small thatch house of his mother being surrounded by IRA men that promoted her elder brother Charlie, to completely throw his lot in with the De Valera troopers, it would be hard to say, but the fact that he joined up was to lead to his untimely death.
It was in Convoy, Donegal, that a truck he was driving for the Free State Forces was ambushed and forced to stop under a fusillade of fire. Charlie emerged from the cab and was fatally wounded.
It caused grave heartache in the family and one can only imagine the distresss it caused my mother.
Charlie was a favourite son: he of the long curly locks, handsome smiling face showing out blue eyes which would light up the day.
Just out of school, he originally worked at Avery's,the weighing scales company, as a representative. To help out on his father's farm he had chased up and down to Cavan where a new innovative machine, the tractor was coming in to its own and willing applicants were being taught to drive.
After his death his brother Hugh, who had been like a twin to him, gave up the ghost. It was said that he used to take great pleasure in striking hands procuring deals on the sale of cattle at the Fairs. He lost his smack and strong hand clench, travelled about in fierce rain, lost the will to live, contracted pneumonia and within a short space of time died.
This must have made a terrible impression on my mother. She contained it as did her youger sister Susan, but bring up the subject fourty or fifty years subsequent and their eyes would still brim up like red canyons swilling with water to be disgorged at any more recall. It was after this that my mother emigrated to Scotland when only about sixteen with a heavy heart and full of distress at reminders of war.
She worked for a time at Craig House, in Edingburgh,'auld reekie' as it was called.There she met my father, Hugh. My father was not fond of Scotland having worked barebacked in the mines and in the shipyard at Clydeside handling dangerously fierce red hot rivets thrown up to him at lightning speed high above the gantries.
He was only too happy to take the road South and engage in new psychiatric ventures in a different environment.
It must have been strange for my mother to take on her occupation of looking after the mentally handicapped in an institution rather than in a home background.
Even more perplexing for her would have been the knowledge of Hitler's ideas of creating a Thousand Year Reich populated by handsome Aryan blue eyed blondes which was of course completely at odds with her pre-occupation with the care of the infirm disabled and sick which made up the members of the hospital community in the country.
While the German Government was preaching the elimination of the Jews, gypsies and whomever they considered incapable members of society we were determined to look after these same people.
This is not to say everything was hunky dory on the home front for the very fact that her charges were having to be removed in the first place from the home environment would have provoked some anxiety in my mothers maternal feelings.expelled from their home environment and lodged into institutions it must have been a puzzling paradox all round. However as long as she could devote individual care as humanly possible for these same people classified as mongols, downs scizophrenic she was happy to do her bit.

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