大象传媒

This story has been transcribed and published by Mark Jeffers, with permission from the author.

I always remember a night when there must have been a bombing in Belfast, after we came back from our evacuation home. I think I was about 12 or 13 at the time. We went out of town again into the country. The army came for us and put us all in a big lorry and took us out to Gilnakirk to a big church hall or school hall, and they had mattresses on the floor. It was great. We knew all the fellows out of our street and they were all there. They were all lying a few mattresses from us and so we made our own entertainment. They had someone up on the stage singing so I got up and sang 鈥淪omewhere over the Rainbow鈥�.

You just made your own entertainment. They brought us back the next day because the bombs didn鈥檛 come during the day, they came only at night so the planes wouldn鈥檛 be spotted coming from a distance. We were sent to the country because all our air raid shelters were above the ground. In England they had buried shelters but that would have meant us digging up the road.

So they brought us back the next morning; it was a great adventure. Whenever you see things on the television now you think, I remember that.

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