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This story is taken from an interview with Fr Seamus Clenaghan, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interview and transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I was born in 1921 …

[I’m originally from] Lisburn. Not the city area or the town — out in the country, the Ballinderry direction. Around that area, 5 miles out.

[When war was declared, 1939]
I thought it was the end of the world when I heard the announcement. It was a Sunday afternoon. I think when the news broke I was in boarding in St Malachy’s College at that time. And we were all brought into the assembly hall, told that war had been declared, and we must now prepare for the worst. And I think at that time, I’m not too sure whether it was that day or very shortly after that, we were provided with gas masks. It was very frightening, the whole thing … the Germans. It could have been over here … the worst.

[gas masks]
Tried them on, shown how to use them.

Nothing much happened then. There was a few warnings. Sirens going. We were right next to the Crumlin Rd Prison, there was just a wall separating us. And there was a siren there, of course, and we got full blast of it when it did go off. From time to time, whether it was for real or just trying peoples’ reactions, I don’t know, but from time to time …
And it was in 1944, I think, when Belfast was bombed. And I was boarding then. That started on the Tuesday before Easter. I think it was the Tuesday, or Monday — Monday night, before easter. I’m not too sure. It was an intense bombing that night. The bombs fell, the landmines, fell on the docks. And they set the timber yard on fire. Of course, Belfast was lit up. And these fires. We were able to watch it from Dormitory windows, we were high up there. We got home next day at any rate. That put an end to our exams, which was wonderful! We still had Term exams to do, and we escaped the rest of them. We were told that those who could travel during the day should do so, and I was one of those who travelled for the next few months. I did that for maybe … the only decent thing the war did was, at least it got me out of Boarding.

[did the boarders have to stay on in St Malachy’s dormitory?]
Yes they did. So many of them were able, for a distance … in those days travelling from Antrim down to Lisburn. If they were travelling that, only further afield, they had to board. And of course, Belfast suffered from bombing not so much that first night. It was said afterwards that there was some ships, destroyers or something, in Belfast harbour, they were after them. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. If they were trying to get … that was their target.
But they came back again after Easter. Easter Tuesday, it was. And they bombed the whole heart out of Belfast at that time. Around Royal Avenue and all that whole area, so much of it was levelled. And weeks and weeks and weeks after it, big shops, homes suffered.
And then there was another area, up around the Antrim Rd. And again, they thought, trying to interpret while up there. They thought, possibly, they had spotted the waterworks up there, and that they were bombing what they thought was the Belfast harbour. Because they put a smokescreen out over the city. Now, it wouldn’t have covered all of the city by any means, but this smokescreen was just something like oil burning or something like that. There was a big cloud, that went over, but that wouldn’t have been over the water. And they stopped when they spotted the water, and this was the part of the city which they also were bombing.
In the heart of the city they had Braziers or whatever they used to create smoke. They had balloons that they put up as well. That was intended to keep them from dive-bombing. As soon as you got any warning, these things went up. Huge things. They were over the city too in various strategic places, wherever there was military, barracks or the like [there would be a barrage balloon].

[Crumlin Rd Jail — the hanging jail]
That was. It was indeed. I can’t remember [executions]. I know there were one or 2 breakouts, quite spectacular breakouts. And of course when this happened, immediately the Crumlin was flooded with warders and police and all the rest of it, looking for them. But the IRA boys were in a wing, towering over. They were in the building up there, here are we down here. Playing football and the like, on Saturdays and Sundays. There would be teams that would come in to play football then. I suppose we were in some sort of competition, whatever it was, I don’t know. But I suppose some of our own teams would have been in play, you’d see them at the windows, they have good flags!
That’s …
They managed to come out and scale the walls and out. How they did it nobody knows.

[air-raid shelters]
The shelters, I think [Geraldine] said, were down around the football grounds there, Celtic Park. I think this is where, somewhere around there. Stuck in there for half the night. Until they get the all clear. You haven’t heard the sirens, have you? They wail, they start wailing. Frightening, even the sound of them. And then the All Clear went, it was a different sound. Of course, I can remember when we were at college these sirens would go off, and they would start firing. I don’t know what they were firing, the guns they were firing in the air, I suppose maybe hoping that through a verge they would keep the planes away. The tracer bullets in it, we could see them going —firing all over the place. Quite a spectacle. We had the feeling of the Germans were overhead.

[did they ever shoot a German plane down?]
I don’t think so.
They had a warning when they were crossing England. They got a warning from England, that the Germans were on their way. And when all this was going up here, what have you, we used to watch that. Not too often, but a couple of times.

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