大象传媒

This story has been transcribed and published by Mark Jeffers, with permission from the author.

I was a member of the fire service in Belfast during the war. I lived in Sydenham between the Shorts Airplane factory and the Belfast shipyard, Harland and Wolff.
We had a very big air raid shelter in our back garden and we used this a lot when the big bombs hit Belfast in 1942. The shelter had enough room inside it for about eight people. It was burrowed under ground with about two feet of earth on top. Sydenham was hit by a lot of shrapnel. I was only 15 years old in 1939 and I went to school until 1941.

During the war, many people went to the south of Ireland to purchase items that were rationed in Northern Ireland. Many people went to buy cheap drink because an average person would only have got about a pint a day here. This was not because beer was rationed but just that it was very scarce. The bar tenders themselves rationed their drinks to make it last and they started selling many unheard of drinks and many old drinks that may have been out of date! All types of beer came to Belfast during the war, not just Guinness. We were able to drink beer from all over the world!

One night the shipyard, which was close to our house, was being bombed. An aircraft carrier in the docks had to fire its guns at the aircraft as it was the only defence the shipyard had. The ship was in for an overhaul and it protected the shipyard from the aircraft.

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