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This story was written by Brian Morgan with the permission of Mr Robert McIlroy

Robert McIlroy was born on the 24/11/1919. At the time of writing this story he looks remarkably well for an eighty five year old that has lived through the horrors of WW2. He proudly served in WW2 with the 3rd Ulster Light Anti Aircraft

‘I always wanted to join the army but my Father wouldn’t let me. Even when I was a child I would march behind the army cadets up on the Ballygomartin Road. It was a dream of mine to join up and when the war started my father just couldn’t stop me from enlisting’ Robert also suprisingly reveals that ‘when we joined up the feeling was that we were going on a grand European tour that we might not otherwise been able to afford’
Recalling his family at the time Robert reveals that his brother Jim, who worked in a Flour mill, was not allowed to enlist as he was seen as a necessity to the war effort on the home front .
After Robert had joined the army he found himself in France shortly after the the war began ‘I remember how the local french people at the beginning were wary of everyone. A lot of them had lived through WW1 and could remember the horrors of it and also one week their villages were occupied by Germans the next by us’
It was not long, however, before he was off to Belgium for a few days and then sent into Holland, behind enemy lines. ‘The main thing I remember is that I was extremely afraid…..we had been asked to do a a special job with some other volunteers, we were asked to enter into occupied Holland, but we were told all the good nco’s were sick. But we went anyway undercover in old wrecks and never spoke English, pretending to be Polish the whole time. I was never as afraid in all my life, that following day,as we could actually see the huge shells landing causing huge explosions. So we went down to the beach and commandeered a boat. We thought as long as it doesn’t leak we’ll be fine. So we turned it upside down , dried it off and got into it and started to row out to sea. We were only about 30-40 yards out when a fellow in a big loud voice shouted ‘what the hell do you think your doing’ to which I shouted ‘we’re going back to England because we’re not staying in this bloody country’ ‘The fellow shouted back in his big loud voice ‘well in that case your going in the wrong direction’ It was a very funny….Then the fellow asked us if we didn’t even have a compass to which we shouted no .He then told us to look at our watches and that it was five to eleven…the fellow shouted over ‘well if you wait to 11 oclock and row the boat straight at a steady rate you’ll be eleven miles off the coast’ ……..4-5 hours into the journey, after heeding this advice, we seen the fellow again and he shouted laughing ‘look your still here you’ve been going around in circles’
When he was allowed to go home it took him 3 weeks to get home and he believes he was lucky to make it back, not because of the German attacks….but because of after that debacle with the rowing boat, he remarks laughing.
But of course there was a very serious side to his time in Holland ‘In the early days when we were on operations behind enemy lines in Holland we never confronted any Germans head on, we believed that if you shot one german you’d then have a thousand shooting back at you so there was no use in ‘cutting your own throat’
So we kept quiet and moved by night. It was especially scarey as we never really got any help from the local Dutch, so we said right we are on our own and we will look after each other’.
As a means of communication they even had to manufacture their own codes. By the time the germans had broke their codes they’d be miles away. But the main thing on their minds was survival. ‘The comeradery between the soldiers went beyond everything, things such as religion or colour never mattered so long as everyone just behaved like an ordinary ulsterman should.’
In 1945 Robert went through Holland and into Germany. The British launched a huge artillery barrage against the Germans which Robert says is recorded as the biggest artillery barrage of WW2 ‘We spent the best part of twenty four hours pasting them’
The signal they proudly recieved that night was ‘be proud you boys of the 29th regiment, you can be proud of yourselves as this is the first time that our shells have landed in German country. Well done and safe home’
.It took about 3 weeks for it to sink in with the locals that ‘Deustchland was kaput’ and when it did sink in ‘they were not the same sparky crowd’ recalls Robert
Suprisingly, amongst Robert and his fellow soldiers, the feeling was subdued and reflective when Germany did fall, although there were some local parties to attend.
However whenever VE day did finally arrive it certainly did not mean the end of the war since the campaign against Japan was still ongoing. Robert remembers how the soldiers went back to their barracks in the South of England ‘we were never more than seven miles away from the big water’ and recalls that he and others that had survived the war against Germany were ‘sweating and paralysed with fear’ at the thought of having to go and do it all again.

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