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DERRY THE PORT
During and after the war years Derry鈥檚 Lough Foyle was used as a NATO naval base, and when all the ships were in the port after taking part in North Atlantic battle duties, hundreds of sailors of every nationality would be out on the town looking for fun and romance. At the back of Friel鈥檚 Terrace where I lived on the top of the banking, there was a big tin hut called the 鈥極aks鈥�. It was used as a dance hall and housey (bingo) hall. Later on in the evenings when it got dark, some of the sailors and local girls would kiss and cuddle behind our back yard walls beside the Oaks, and for mischievous fun we would often throw water over the wall on the courting couples below to listen to them shouting threats and swearing at us. We would be bent over trying to hold in our giggling as we ran out through the house to the front street in case our parents would find out what we were up to and not let us go out again that night.

The Blackout
A blackout was strictly enforced at dusk during the war, the street lamps were never lit and every householder had to cover the insides of their windows with black blinds at night in case any German aircraft saw the light and bombed the town. Motor vehicles had to have hoods put on their lights to deflect the beams downwards and all torch lamps had to be directed to the ground.

Wardens patrolled the streets and if they saw a chink of light coming from a window one of them hammered on the door of the house and warned the occupant to cover up properly or be prosecuted. On moonlit nights everywhere was bathed in a soft light and I could look down from our landing window at all the silver rooftops in the Bogside below.

Summer nights brought their own light, with the setting sun still giving out its golden glow into the wee small hours of the morning. Of course, we didn鈥檛 see it very often when we were young because we were fast asleep before ten o鈥檆lock.

As things were scarce then and ballpoint pens were not yet invented, my brother Mickey made ink for our pens with water and red or black dyes that he stored in glass bottles. Every night when we were all in bed our mother came into our room in the dark and sprinkled us with holy water to keep us safe from all harm and evil. One morning she came in to wake us for school and when she saw us she blessed herself and said, 鈥淢y God, what has happened to you all, have you all got the measles?鈥� We didn't know what she was talking about until we got up and looked at each other. We couldn't understand it; we were all covered in red spots but none of us felt sick. Then she realised what had happened; she had sprinkled us with some of Mickey鈥檚 red ink instead of the holy water and we all had a good laugh for a long time afterwards whenever we talked about it.
Yanks in Springtown Camp
An American military lorry came into the street one day and all the local children were placed on board under the canvas canopy. We were taken to the American camp at Springtown near the Buncrana Road. I didn鈥檛 know at the time where we were. Inside the camp we sat at long tables with hundreds of other children and were given pastry and candy and ice cream. It was a very special treat for us in those days of strict rationing. Then we were all taken into another part of the camp where we watched cartoons of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Afterwards, the lorry took us all home again, each of us clutching a small bag of sweets. I later learned that the Americans were celebrating Independence Day and that was why we were given the special treat.

When the war ended the Americans abandoned the camp, leaving about 180 empty Nissan huts behind. A lot of people from our area, and especially Fahan Street, went to live in the huts. It was like moving into a mansion, especially for a family who had been living in terrible conditions in one room of a house with no electricity that was home to maybe six families who all had to share the one outside toilet.

Springtown was therefore seen as a good place to live until eventually the huts began to deteriorate and conditions worsened again for the residents. Derry Corporation and the Rural County Council disowned the place and the people had to fend for themselves for years. They had to fight and agitate for better housing and social acceptance, but that is a story better left for the ex-Springtown people to tell themselves.

The Yankee Boats
Whenever the American navy ships that were taking part in manoeuvres with the North Atlantic Defence Fleet came and docked at the quay, we used to go to the jetties in the late evenings and stand at the foot of the gangplanks. There were a few other boys from the Bridge Street and Sugarhouse Lane areas there too that I still remember called Okay Barratt, Billy 鈥楪urky鈥� Gallagher, Dickie Valley and the two Doherty brothers, nicknamed 鈥楤labber鈥� and 鈥楩ly鈥�. We were all hoping to do some paid errands for the sailors whom we referred to as the 鈥榊anks鈥�.
Whenever the Yanks came to the bottom of the gangplank we surrounded them, each of us hoping to be the lucky person to be sent into the town to purchase small food items, usually a dozen doughnuts and a pint of milk or the odd bottle of Irish whiskey. The pint of milk and dozen doughnuts that we called gravy rings, cost about a half crown and the sailor would give us a five-dollar bill which was worth twenty-five shillings and tell us to keep the change whenever we returned with his order. It was an easy way for us to earn some pocket money and at the end of the evening my friends and I shared our tips out evenly between us.

Not very often, a dishonest person, when asked to bring a bottle of whiskey would fill an empty whiskey bottle with black tea and swindle the unsuspecting sailor out of his dollars. The two Doherty brothers, Fly and Blabber, who were with the Bridge Street boys used to sing Irish ballads for the sailors in Bill Dalton鈥檚 Bar in Rossville Street, and were recorded singing by Bill on his reel-to-reel tape recorder.

One evening when we were at the quay, a sailor asked Fly and Blabber to get him an Irish colleen. He gave them money to bring the colleen in a taxi to him when he came off duty. There happened to be a local female character about the town then called Maggie MacKay who was over fifty, but to us she seemed to be nearly a hundred. She wore a long dress and had a shawl around her head and shoulders, a style that was then still common in the western parts of Donegal. Fly and Blabber brought Maggie to the dock in the taxi and when the sailor looked inside, he screwed up his face when he beheld his wrinkled Irish colleen laid out on the back seat. She was smiling with gaps in her teeth and fluttering her eyelids at him from under her shawl. 鈥淗oly Moley,鈥� he exclaimed, 鈥渋f that鈥檚 what you call an Irish colleen, then my old grand-mother must be a beauty queen.鈥�

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