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John Beresford Ash lives in a grand old house in Ardmore, just outside the city of Derry. During the war their land was taken over by the US Marines and they also had some other very interesting vistors. This is a transcript of an interview conducted by Deirdre Donnelly and transcribed by Jenny Merwin.

I was an only child. I had a lovely childhood here in Ashbrook. The summer of 1940 my mother and I went to Port Ballintray and my father would come visit on the weekends. I remember an immensely tall officer coming and talking to us at our table — Col. John Percivillle Maxwell from Co. Down --- he’d come to tell anybody including any ex officers munch included my father, that all personal firearms had to be handled in to the war ministry and also to be jolly careful driving home because patrol cars were going to be requisitioned and taken away from you. So his drive home, my father would have to drive quickly and keep his head down. This was 1940.

The Americans didn’t enter the war until December 1941, and that year came on quite dramatically because Ashbrook, our own home and Beechill, the next door home owned by the Nicholsons in these days were taken over by the equivalent of the American admiralty — they established 2 camps one was called Beechill A and Ashbrook and Beedchill B which was our Beechill. These camps were training airports for new recruits from American literally knowing nothing about warfare and they did their basic training here with us. Basically Beechill had the officers mess and the administrators of this brigade and on our land we had the rifle range, the assault course, and we had the sergeant’s mess and the troops, the marines, were housed in Nissan huts and we had the shelters. I remember they had loud speakers and every now and again you’d hear ‘ Now HEAR this, Now HEAR this. ’ Major P. Schwatzenberger to the PX please’ and the most wonderful sounds began to echo around the countryside.

They didn’t come into our house at all, except on Sundays my parents used to have a couple of officers to lunch. And they made quite lasting friendships. One of the officers used to keep a horse of his stabled here and I have to say on one occasion I remember coming into the drawing room and there was a very tense atmosphere and people were talking about high treason and how the damned fellow ought to be hanged. This was very early on after the yanks had arrived. What had happened was there was no provision for church for the Catholic- American servicemen. So they were marched off to the local Ardmore chapel where one local priest said ‘ I noticed there are American soldiers here, and you are to have nothing to do with them because these people are fighting on Britains side in Britains’ wars. Well of course they were back to camp after the service and told their officers about this who were furious and they got a Catholic priest over pronto from somewhere and Catholic churches were rigged up in the great community hall they had in the camp. Bishop Farren then became the Chaplin to the Americans ultimately.

Day to day life: apart from the fact that they came to repair any damage they did, really there was no contact with them at all they obviously had plenty of contact with the local girls. But with people like us there was virtually no contact, senior officers yes but the soldiers and marines and military police we simply never talked to them at all.

There was a tremendous amount of activity and work — you know lorries coming and going and building work. When we went to town, which wasn’t often, there were frighteningly beefy looking shore patrols who used to wack any americans they even thought looked like being drunk over the head and put them in the back of wagons and cart them off.

Easily the most memorable thing was the visit of the General Chief Marshall who was head of all the American forces and their allies the British too. And Avril Harriman who was the American Ambassador in Moscow- and side-kick of Roosevelt Harry Hopkins. These three came to stay with my parents because General Marshall wanted to inspect the troops here in Londonderry. And also Harriman wanted to go and have a word with Basil Brooke the Prime Minister. Then they were going to fly back from Ballykelly or Eglinton airport. They arrived just before lunch, a terrible tragedy happened because they were in an armed convoy and a Derry transport authority bus decided to overtake this convoy and the Americans who were terribly trigger happy shot the bus driver dead.

Of course there was a row about that particularly since the bus driver was a First World War veteran. But that’s war for you — if you get in the way of an American convoy you were likely to be shot. General Marshall and my parents and Avril Harriman and Hopkins spent the night here. When I was being bathed, General Marshall thought I was a little girl. At dinner General Marshall agreed with my father that the real enemy was Stalin, not Hitler and the communists would be the great worry in the future.

General Marshall wrote a telegram letter to my mother and he said he was enclosing ‘ a box of candy’ for the ‘little toe-haired gentleman’ which was myself. I ate the chocolates and we have the letter still today. He was a lovely man and I remember as they left a huge armoured convoy drew up outside our front door and we had a red arboretum rhododendron on the front lawn and General Marshall said to my parents ‘ the war can wait, I’d like to go over and look at this rhododendron.’ He then went off and continued the war. It was great fun for us to meet then.

Of course the Americans had unlimited money and they took full advantage of being here and got drunk a lot of potcheen which was strictly illegal and there were quite a number of cases of Americans getting alcoholic blindness and of course the inevitable, babies but that happened everywhere. Nothing surprising about that.

Even though the camp was on our land it had high wire fences around it and a sentry on the gate. So they had their own little America inside there. They certainly had a huge building over at the Clooney base-- they had a couple of tennis courts there. Our men used to go out with the local girls and often our groundsman would find the girls worse for wear in the woods on many a morning after.

I don’t remember the Americans going at all. But I do remember they just walked out and left things standing practically, with the meals on their plates and of course within minutes the local population was rooting.

One thing I do remember was the Messines bomb on the Buncrana Rd — I was woken up by my father. Between the kitchen here and the scullery here is one of the original walls of the house built in 1590 it’s really like a passage way through the wall — we spent an hour there huddled together till the bombing of Derry had stopped.

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