大象传媒

The night of the big air raid on Belfast my Father was on duty in our neighbourhood. We had been wakened by the sirens and gathered in the back kitchen of our house. Preparations had already been made. The window into the back yard was covered with a wooden shutter reinforced with metal advertisements, the type which used to hang on every railway station between Bangor and Belfast. One was for an Australian health drink and another was for tea. The large table was pushed against the wall, the leaf of the table was put on top to reinforce it, then a couple of bed iron and finally on top went an old horsehair mattress. Another mattress went underneath the table and my Mother, sister, brother and I huddled there. We could hear the German planes flying overhead in waves. My Father came in and took us out to see them. They were dropping flares and it was as bright as day, the planes seemed so close. We were told to go back to our den under the table and it didn鈥檛 seem very long before there was a mighty series of explosions getting closer and closer. One sounded so close we thought the house had been hit. I was very frightened and then I heard my Mother laugh. When I looked at her she was covered in soot and so were we all. The nearest bomb of the stick ,which the Germans had off loaded on Bangor, had done the best chimney sweeping job our chimney had ever had. We were sitting in what looked about six inches of soot and we all looked like Kentucky Minstrels. I guess our laughter had more than a hint of hysteria in it. Every window in the front of the house was gone, there was a lump of shrapnel imbedded in the front door, but we were unhurt.

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