大象传媒

My name is Mary Connor I come from North Belfast. My first memory of the war was the night of the blitz on April 1941.We were wakened by the air raid sirens screaming out and my father hurried us all down the stairs and hid underneath them until the all clear. When we eventually emerged in the morning it was like a vision from Hell, our own house wasn鈥檛 too bad, but when we went outside a lot of the houses were totally destroyed. People were screaming and crying about relatives that had been killed.

Next morning we were told that were going to be evacuated and I was very excited because it meant no school, on the way to the station we could hear loud bangs which frightened us very much, my father said it was damaged buildings being blown up as they were very dangerous if anyone tried to get back in to collect some of their possessions they could killed and what a tragedy after such a night the noise was terrible and children were crying and we started to cry as well. We all had labels pinned to our coats and then we all finally got on the train.

Looking out the window we could see little cottages in the distance and I wanted to go back home even if the doors were blown off the empty spaces and quietness made me feel homesick. Arriving at last we got out at a small country station expecting people to meet us but it was deserted, the adults were very angry as by this time we were very cold and hungry, what next?

We were wearily trudging along the road when along came a couple of big country men when the adults explained who and what we were they took pity on us and one man said to the other if nobody comes to take these people in Willie John I鈥檓 going to kick the door of this hall in and get these poor people off the road which he proceeded to do.

Next morning we were brought to a school in a place called Randalstown and from there we were taken to different houses my family ended up with a wee country woman and her son and so began my introduction to country life, the blitz was forgotten and so was the war, however after a few months my mother decided to risk going back to Belfast and I started back with a heavy heart not because I was leaving the country but I knew we were going back to school as usual; here in the country we didn鈥檛 have to do any work and every one felt sorry for us it was great.

Back in Belfast life returned to normal for us children but for the adults it must have been a nightmare, women had to queue for hours in the shops for very little food, rationing was the order of the day, I think we were only allowed 2oz of butter each per week and to supplement this women got sweetie bottles filled them with milk and shook like mad until the milk turned to butter. As we were only given one egg per week the government supplied us with dried eggs which we didn鈥檛 think were too bad. We didn鈥檛 have bananas or oranges as these fruits had to be brought from overseas as the ships were all used in the war effort fighting the enemy was more important

During this time we went about our lives as usual some nights we were wakened by the sirens and we had to run to the nearest air raid shelter, these were small brick structures reinforced with the metal and were supposed to be bomb-proof, but unfortunately in some cases this proved to be untrue. However, it was the only protection we had and we had to make the best of it, for us children it was one big adventure, but for our parents it was a nightmare.

Mothers seemed to bear the brunt of every day life with queuing up continually for food and generally keeping the spirit of life up. It was certainly very difficult and the war seemed to go on forever.

The war ended in May 1945 and for most families the hardship went on because rationing went on for years, but thank God we finally got peace but the war with Japan went on until August 1945 and please we won鈥檛 have to endure another one.

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