大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Billy McKnight at the Ballymena Servicemen鈥檚 Association, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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[they say the Luftwaffe bombed the waterworks because they wanted to]
Destroy it, because they鈥檇 have no water for fighting the fire then, or drinking. That was a lot of nonsense. It wasn鈥檛 a bomb at all [I told the fellow]. It was a land mine. I was one of the boys that drained it.

[UXBs]
Well, you see, that one I was talking to you about in the waterworks 鈥� that was a landmine, it wasn鈥檛 a bomb. About the size of a, you know the wee baby Austin cars? It was about the size of that. Well, it didn鈥檛 explode. It was in the lower dam, next to the Antrim Rd. and we had to drain the dam. And we had 6 pumps at it for a week, pumping. You know, we had different crews 鈥� we weren鈥檛 there all the time. And they evacuated all round the Cave Hill rd there and the Antrim Rd. And this navy officer come, a bomb disposal man, and he said if it was going to go off it would go off when it begins to show above the water, when the water comes off it. So some of our officers, they said 鈥� we had 6 pumps, and we had a man on each pump. You had to watch yer auld gauges and keep her going, fill her up with petrol, you know? This type of thing. He says 鈥渨e鈥檇 better cut it down to 3, 1 man looks after 2 pumps. That way if it goes up there鈥檒l be only 3 of you go up instead of 6鈥�.

So I was one of the 3 that was left. We watched very carefully, coming up as you鈥檙e beginning to show more and more and more. Nothing happened.

And then the Navy men got a wee rowing boat out, or a wee dingy, and they went out to it. He worked at it futtered at it and screwed at it for about 15-20 mins. And then he held the thing up, the fuse up.

And it was a huge landmine 鈥� it came down in a parachute, you see? The ordinary bombs just came down, but it came down in a parachute.
There was landmines landed here and there. There was one up the Crumlin road somewhere, and it just wiped out about 3 streets. My mother had far out connections lost at that time, in that one.

They dropped the incendiaries. The incendiary bomb was a wee long thing like a window-weight. If you got them and dropped them in a bucket of water, it was all right. It wasn鈥檛 as bad as they 鈥�

And then later on I got married here in Ballymena in 1948. And later on I joined the ordinary fire service here in Ballymena.

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