大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Alec Thompson at the Royal British legion, Bangor, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Anita Cochrane, transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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We finally decided we were going to have to move out. So I was down in Lurgan for a while, we got a house in Lurgan, evacuees. My parents came down 鈥� well, my Father stayed in Belfast, Mother came down and we lived in a wee house with an old lady in factory lane in Lurgan.

She was just 鈥� The authorities just put you in with somebody. These people said 鈥渨e鈥檒l take people鈥� and they were probably getting paid for it. They probably were. We were next to a big factory, and there was a NAAFI beside us. And the soldiers, the Americans and all were stationed there as well.
We used to stand outside it. They鈥檇 come out and give you bars of chocolate, and you would say 鈥渢his is great!鈥�
My mummy and my sister, my Eldest sister and the third one.
The old lady we lived with, she was a wee bit cantankerous. My mother didn鈥檛 get on with her. We went to the authorities and said 鈥淲e can鈥檛 live with this lady鈥�. So he says 鈥渞ight, I鈥檝e got a wee Orange hall here out in Boconnel. Would you fancy living in it?鈥� We said 鈥淵es!鈥�

So out we moved to Boconnel Orange hall. It was a nice wee Orange hall, so we lived the Anteroom in it. We stayed there for a good while, until eventually we came back to Belfast. After things had sort of, they鈥檇 realised there weren鈥檛 going to be any more air-raids on Belfast.

We were kids. It was just our family, just one family. We went to school at Boconnel, which is now the roundabout where you鈥檇 go to Oxford island. Boconnel school was there, and it was only 2 classrooms. So it was everybody from when you go to school to you were about maybe 8-9 were in the one classroom, and the rest were in the other one.

[did the Orangemen need their hall?]
I don鈥檛 think they ever had to. I don鈥檛 think they met during the war. If they did they could have used the main hall. They mustn鈥檛 have, because we had 2 big double beds in the corner! That鈥檚 where we slept during the war.
Then we came back to Belfast. The blitz, there was no more bombing of Belfast.

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