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A Boy Makes a Few Quid
HUGH McNUTT

Well, my recollections of the city in the Second World War were...the British Army arrived...I lived in the glen and at the bottom of our street was a big farm known as Martha Woods’ farm. The British Army came in and took over the fields surrounding the farm and erected barbed wire fences. The story we got was that they were afraid the Germans were coming over from the Republic to take over the North. We had a shop at that time and my father was a very ambitious man and had great ideas about things. It was September time 1939 or thereabouts, and he asked me to go down to the field to sell chocolates or cigarettes and stuff which I was very happy to do because I was about ten or twelve at the time and was on school holidays. He organised a tobacco lid of cigarettes and chocolate. I didn’t believe it myself but I was sold out in about five minutes and then back up to have it replenished again. That would be one of my memories.
The other memory would be that we had the American forces arrive then before D-Day and the Canadians were here as well and Portuguese sailors, the navy and all. This was the naval base for the Atlantic at the time. Magee College was the headquarters of the Atlantic submarine bases where messages came in there to the Rock Road. They were deciphered and then sent out to the navy. The reason, I think, we were chosen in Derry was because we’re much nearer the Atlantic than any other British port. It is ninety miles from Malin Head to the Atlantic so the German subs were lying in wait, out around there, for the allied ships to come round and they would torpedo them.
Another memory would be where we had the dance halls here in Derry, the Corinthian notably, and the sailors, when they came ashore after being at sea for maybe three or four months or longer, they tried to enjoy themselves and went into the pubs and had a few drinks and then would go up to the Corinthian, or one of the big dance halls here. They would try to get off with the local girls. The local lads didn’t like this, of course, there was the odd row and then the shore patrol would arrive and take the navy away. We had Americans with all their lorries. The first American lorry I had seen was driven by chains rather than a driveshaft. These were all new to us. The Americans had plenty of money and they could buy anything and the shops did very well. They gave us sweets and chocolate. Termonbacca was one of our homes and every Christmas they organised a party and took the children there and wined them and dined them and made them very happy.
There was a mixture of excitement, very little resentment. In fact, being a small town and with unemployment, nobody was working, it created work as well. Waterside and Springtown camps opened up and local people were employed there as cleaners. They were mostly welcomed. The Canadians we found difficult because they were very aggressive when they got drink but the other forces were much easier to meet. It was good for Derry because, if I remember correctly, the population was 50,000, we now have 100,000 and any kind of work...shops did very well. The Americans would’ve bought a lot of Irish clothes and Derry shirt factories were famous for their shirts and many of these things were being bought and being taken back to their home town.
When the forces left, we went back to the old days again of no work, very high unemployment and, if I recall correctly, the thing that filled that vacuum a little bit was Du Pont. They opened up and a lot of local men got work there. We suffered a lot after the war; we didn’t have the same employment at all. Many households went back to the old days of the labour exchange, trying to make ends meet.

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