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This story is taken from an interview with Geraldine McGee and Seamus Clenaghan, and has been added to the site with their permission. The authors fully understands the site's terms and condition. The interview and transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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[I remember ...]
The sirens going and us getting up and being taken over to Celtic Park. But I also remember my uncle was the … he had a white band on his arm … the ARP man, and he was very very involved in that. He was an ex-seaman, and he was very very involved in that.

My mother ...

In my house we had a steel air-raid shelter, and if the bombs were going off we would all get under that. But if it got too severe we were all rushed up to Celtic park. I remember that distinctly. And it seemed to me, perpetual daylight — as a child, it seemed perpetual daylight in Belfast. Out at that time, people were walking streets, not in their beds.

Everyone had to be masked.
Everyone had to wear gas-masks, even the baby.

They had a blackout. Your blinds, you couldn’t have lights on.
Car lights had masks on so they only shone 3-4 yards in front of you. The street-lights were masked too, weren’t they?
I was only young then, and things like that I remember. But …

I remember we had an air-raid shelter in St Malachy’s. They dug out the ground under the cellar, underground, and then on top of it built this shelter. But they didn’t take into consideration that it might be the water level beneath the ground. And of course, when we come to go into it we couldn’t, there was a couple of feet of water in it.

I lived in the Falls Rd, and on one of the streets, Avery St, had brick air-raid shelters. And the people used to gather for prayer — you know, they lit candles and prayed the rosary and did things like that. It made them feel safe. They remained there for a long — it appeared to me a long, long time. But they always kept up churches, such was the reverence.

[did the shelters have a concrete roof and brick walls?]
That’s right, a brick wall. And they had no windows or anything. They were built so the doors … there was no door, just an open space. It felt really safe. These sirens would go off, and everybody was running so you would just run until you got to wherever it was you were going. But personally I was never involved in the bombings. My mother would have experienced all that. I remember that distinctly, in Celtic Park. And I remember the all-clear, hearing the all-clear, like a sense of relief. There was all kind of … we didn’t understand it, but we kind of but apart from that I have nothing.

G
Do you remember the Barrage balloons?

[they were] Like big fish. Like the R-101 flying from … trying to go to India. It blew up someplace along the way. Like that. [they were] huge things.

Easter Tuesday night.
We used to be taken to Celtic Park on 2-3 occasions, we were taken to Celtic Park. We slept on the hay, like animals. Looking back we were just sitting, very quiet.
The light that shone.
We were just children.

And strange enough the doors came open.
It’s hard to get into the mindset of that era. Today …

That would have been Easter Tuesday. That was the time when Belfast really got it bad. The day before Easter, it would be the Monday before Easter, the first …
And then. The Easter Tuesday night. That was the really …

G
But a bomb fell near St Peter’s, didn’t it?

S
They say it fell between the spires. There are 2 spires on St Peter’s, and it fell between them. Which is very bizarre. And of course, there are houses all around there. They all survived, nobody hurt.

G
Afterwards, up the Falls Park …
And they were forbidden by men there to pick up anything off the street. I suppose …
I remember hearing about children that picked it up and it went off in their hand, losing their fingers or whatever. They’re always cautioned to be …

S
Ever see the Tracer bullets? It’s like a whole ray of them, one after the other. Like what you see on the hallowe’en nights. Lighting up the sky, flying out.

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