大象传媒

I was attached to a group which carried out censorship duties during the war. This involved reading every letter which came into Northern Ireland. When the recipient of the letter received it, there may have been portions of text struck out, if it was felt that it contained some piece of information that would harm the war effort. There was a large office in Belfast where the letters were read. It was located behind the Bank Buildings in the centre of the city, and when that office was bombed during an air raid and destroyed, we were relocated to Drumglass House in Marlborough Park, Belfast. During my time in Censorship I was head of a section of about 20 people and anything of interest would have been routed through me. I remember cutting out masses of dialogue in letters, because anything which was doubtful wasn鈥檛 allowed to be mentioned, for example, anything about a ship arriving or about specific regiments or something which might cause damage. I don鈥檛 remember anything being of a really sinister nature. There were about 150 people all together working in the Censorship Department in Northern Ireland. Everybody wanted to help during the war and there were married women with children at school worked in censorship, and this suited them because of the hours of work. The duties of censorship were only carried out during office hours, there wasn鈥檛 any shift system worked. I travelled by bicycle to work. The day after the office at the Bank Buildings was burnt I remember sitting in the garden at home, I think it was a sunny May day, and watching the ash floating down as result of all the fires in Belfast. Our authorities were very quick in getting an office from which to work, I think it only took them 48 hours to get new premises from which to work. The whole of the Bank Buildings shop, as well as our offices and contents were completely destroyed. We had Fire Watchers on duty each night to raise the alarm if fire bombs should rain down from the sky. There was one girl, aged about 18 or 19 and she was very brave and had put out several fire bombs before these engulfed the building.

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