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These stories were submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from Fivemiletown Primary School on behalf of Brian Houston and have been added to the site with his permission.

Gathering nuts
During the Second World War and when I was about ten I remember getting on my bicycle and going up to The Folly. Along the top path the wee beech nuts would be strewn across the path. I scooped them up and then picked out the ones that hadn鈥檛 been walked on and broken and put them in a jam jar. It took about two hours and then when I got home it took a further two hours to shell then. Then my mother baked a cake adding the nuts to the mixture. (Some of the other ingredients came from Monaghan!). We all waited patiently till the cake came out of the oven. When it came out it smelt delicious but my mother said the cake had to cool down and it would be much better to wait to the next day.

When dawn broke the next day I waited eagerly for my mother to produce the cake but she then decided we would have it at teatime. The cake was placed in the centre of the table and we all waited for my mother to cut and share out the cake and boy it was worth waiting for!

As the cake proved to be a great success my mother decided that she should bake another cake for my aunts who lived on The Mall. This meant that I had to go again up to The Folly to gather the beech nuts but to my dismay it had been raining and the nuts lying on the ground were mixed with the wet leaves. It was a horrible experience but I could not let my mother or my aunts down. So another cake was baked and enjoyed by my aunts.

I was glad when the beech nut season was over because it became a regular occurrence. 鈥淏rian, would you go up The Folly and get some beech nuts. I want to bake a cake鈥�.

My mother and I also used to visit the almshouses at Tower hill which had a giant walnut tree and we were permitted to gather the nuts that had fallen on the ground. Sometimes I helped them along by throwing up a stick. The walnuts sometimes had the remainder of their outer coat (outside shell) and on taking them off the juice stained your hands.

Mac-Pac show your light
During WW2 there was a black out which meant that no lights were allowed to be visible outside. This meant that all car lights had to be directed down onto the road and be in no way visible from an aircraft in the sky above which would give enemy bombers an indication that there were buildings or people below.

The town of Armagh after dark was quiet and The Mall in particular was deserted. Although we now know that we should not have been doing it, we invented a game to play during the black out. This game involved each person in a 鈥榩ack鈥� of about twelve arriving at The White Walk where we would decide who was to be the runner. The runner would set out across The Mall in the dark and disappear from our vision. After approximately four minutes we would shout 鈥楳ac-pac show your light or we won鈥檛 follow鈥� The person who was the runner on hearing this shout had to flash his torch in four different directions. Once he was spotted by the pack off we would go to try and catch him. You were allowed to shout 鈥楳ac-pac 鈥︹�� about every four minutes. The idea was not for everybody to run straight after the light when it flashed but to get into position where the runner would actually be surrounded and caught. When caught he was 鈥榡umped on and thumped鈥� (not roughly!) A new runner was then picked.

During the game we had to watch we were not caught by the police or ARP or trip over the courting couples.

Memories of lettuces and air raid sirens

During WW2 as food was rationed a great many people rented small plots of land to help out with the war effort and grow their own vegetables. My father had a plot at the back of the gaol in Armagh. He employed a man to help out with the rough digging and planting of potatoes etc. My brother Pat and I thought it would be a good idea to grow radishes and lettuce so we asked my father for a little bit of land to do so. We dug our beds and planted our seeds.

One Saturday morning Pat and I headed up to the plot carrying our gas masks on our shoulders. We were busy tending to our harvest when the alarm siren wailed out its warning of enemy aircraft. I looked at Pat and he looked at me. The two of us dropped our spades and ran home as quick as possible.

It was the first time the alarm had been sounded. Unfortunately it sounded many times after that. I remember one occasion when Belfast was under heavy attack and the lights from the houses and factories on fire could be seen on the distant horizon. My mother took my brother Pat, my sister Ann and I down to the kitchen and we sat under the table. My father who had been in WW1 and had been seriously wounded was not able to join the army in WW2. He was in the National Fire Service and was out in fear of incendiary bombs. He was equipped with a hatchet, a stirrup pump and a bucket in case the bombs fell. In all the shops and on flat roofs there were buckets of sand and all the fire hydrants were marked.

The NFS and ARP, Home Guard and Ambulance Corps had organised exercise. On one occasion when the town was supposed to have been bombed, men and women were positioned around the town with notices pinned on them stating what their injuries were e.g. broken leg and severe cut to neck. The object of the exercise was that the auxiliary services should deal with the pretend injuries and pretend fires etc. There was a long delay in some of the pretend injured being attended to. One individual was lying on the Technical School steps (used as the library now) with a cardboard notice on his chest stating something like large piece of shrapnel in shoulder. Time passed. He got fed up waiting for assistance so he got up, took off the notice, turned it over and wrote on it something to the effect of Sorry, gone home, bled to death. This was reported in the local paper the following week much to the merriment of the people of Armagh.

With regard to the lettuces 鈥� my brother and I were very pleased to be able to provide family and friends with an ample supply of radishes and lettuces. We learnt by our mistakes that we should not have sown the seed all at the one time because we ended up with dozens of lettuces and we grew tired of lettuce and radish sandwiches.

Evacuees
When it became evident that the larger cities throughout the British Isles, especially the ports were to become targets for bombing, it was decided by the Government that all children under a certain age should be evacuated out of the potential danger. My cousins Bobby and Maureen lived in London and my Auntie Laura and her two children Patricia and Ian lived in Belfast. They were evacuated to Armagh to stay with my grandmother and aunts who lived in a large house on The Mall. Auntie Laura鈥檚 house was completely demolished during the blitz in Belfast.

I have many memories of sharing time with them during their stay with my grandmother but my most vivid memory is of my schoolbag. My father and mother had bought me a beautiful leather schoolbag for my back which had two reflector lights built into the back of the satchel. It was my pride and joy but I never got to wear it. Why you might ask!

During my cousin Bobby鈥檚 stay in Armagh he was to attend the Armstrong School so he required a school bag and unfortunately my parents thought it would be a nice gesture to give him my beautiful satchel. How proud he was on his first day at school and how dismayed and sad I was to see him walk out the door with my pride and joy on his back.

A few months later Bobby became ill and he was diagnosed with scarlet fever. In those days scarlet fever was treated very seriously and Bobby was removed to the isolation hospital at Tower hill and instructions were given that all his belongings should be burnt including my beautiful school satchel.

Many years later, Bobby visited me in Armagh and unfortunately he did not remember this incident but it still stands out in my memory as one of the most dismal days of WW2!

Paper
During the time Bobby was here in Armagh there was a salvage drive. All the salvaged paper was kept in the boiler room of the Armstrong School. Among the salvaged paper there were hundreds of different lemonade and soft drink labels which were shaped like RAF emblems. They had come from Kirkers which was the mineral water company in Armagh. We organised 鈥榬aiding parties鈥� and we retrieved many labels and displayed them proudly on our chests as badges. To this day I do not understand why we were not severely reprimanded.

A friend lost
Living in the town, above the jeweller鈥檚 shop, we often sat on our back doorstep and on the doorsteps of the other adjacent shops 鈥� Chapman鈥檚 hardware shop, Graham鈥檚 drapers shop and Knipe鈥檚 furniture store. I remember John and Valerie Graham and Walter Chapman.

Walter was older and he joined the navy. My memory of Walter Chapman was that he looked like Van Johnston. He was a wireless operator on a destroyer. He used to come home and talk to us. He was in uniform and we were envious of his uniform. One day the situation changed 鈥� Walter was reported missing. He was never found. From that day his father, who was a kind man, didn鈥檛 like us sitting on their step and every morning could be heard whistling 鈥楰eep the home fires burning鈥�.

If the war had continued Pat and I would have gone. As a family we didn鈥檛 lose any brothers, sisters or parents. We were fortunate. As I have got older I have become increasingly aware of how fortunate we were.

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