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This story is taken from an interview with Billy McKnight at the Ballymena Servicemen鈥檚 Association, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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After the raids, you see, at that time all the fire stations were in Belfast. There was no full-time fire brigade, only in Belfast and Derry. The rest was all AFS stations or council, like Ballymena, run by the council. They blew the Mill horn and the auld boy went and got the horse out the road and brought it in, that kind of thing. Then they nationalised the Fire Service, and they said 鈥� instead of having all the stations in the city, they鈥檙e going to get hit. So they moved out. They opened full-time stations in Larne, Newry, Coleraine, Newtownards, Lisburn, Ballymena, Portadown. And I was one of the first boys shifted to Larne. We opened Larne station. If they did start to bomb, we could come in, instead of trying to get out.

That would have been 鈥�43, I would say. The end of 鈥�42 to 鈥�43. And then they started in the city, where there was a big lot of buildings knocked down. There was a big one down in High Street, near where the Whig offices used to be. And they built these big water tanks that hold so many thousand gallons of water. You know, big concrete tanks. And they had a big lot of them over the city - here, there and everywhere. Wherever there was a space. Because if the mains got hit, then we threw the suction into these and you could have got water out of these tanks. And as well as that we had Canvas dams, which held quite a lot of water too. Because when the bombs was falling, if the mains got hit, then you had no water.

I went to Larne. Then I went from Larne to Ballymena. Then I went from Ballymena to Lisburn. Lisburn to Newtownards. Newtownards to Portadown.

And then when, the end of 41, when the Japs hit Pearl harbour in December. Then America came into the war, and we used to get the American boats coming in. At that time Hitler had a go at Russia, and they were getting it bad. Then Churchill started this aid to Russia fun, and these American boats was coming in to Pollock up. And they were loading them with the Hi-ex TNT, you see? We had to go down and stand by them while they all loaded this ship. And everybody had to wear rubber boots and all, in case there was a spark or anything. You鈥檇 have ended up on the Cave Hill.
These auld ships, they called them 鈥淟iberty ships鈥�, and the Americans built one every week. But there was about half of them broke in 2 before they got to Russia. They still got a big load through. You could see them, we could see them in the Lough there, gathering up the convoys. Maybe 60 or 70 ships, you know?

But that was the biggest raids.

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