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I was born on the 27th August 1924 and was 15 when the war broke out. I lived at 73 Dunraven Park along with my four sisters, Theresa, Annie, Meta and Rosemary and then my brother John and of course my mum and dad. An aunt of my dad's also lived with us during part of the war years. In the beginning we weren’t really prepared for war and gas masks weren’t given out until much later on. My youngest sister who was born in 1942 was eventually given what was called a ‘Mickey Mouse’ gas mask.

The thing that was most frightening during the war years was the bombing raids. We spent some of that time under the stairs and I can remember that my young sister Meta sat on my mother’s knee and never said one word throughout the raids. The ground seemed to tremble and shake and we were all very afraid. We had an old piano and it played notes all night without anyone else touching the keys. Sometimes our friends and neighbours like Mrs Cluelow her husband and son Fred were also with us. It was cramped and there were no facilities apart from the food, water and buckets we brought with us. The raids of course lasted all night. My granny Foster lived in number 16 Thorndike Street and her next door neighbour’s house number was 18. My granny was one of the lucky ones as she evacuated herself and had taken a house in Donaghadee with her family which meant she escaped the direct hit on the air raid shelter in Thorndike Street. The only next door neighbour, who survived, Jim Wirey, hadn’t gone into the shelter but all of the rest of his family had. Ravenscroft Avenue also had a direct hit and a boy who was a school with me David Livingstone was killed.
Dunraven Park was not as built up as it is now and there was a big house behind us owned by a family called the Sinclairs. This family owned a big shop in town called Gorwich, a ladies and children’s outfitters at the corner of Royal Avenue on the other side of what is now Castlecourt. This family very kindly shared their air raid shelter with us and I can remember being with them during the alerts. In fact during one raid my sister Theresa ran along the street towards their shelter with a cushion on her head as the moon shone so brightly and she thought that would obscure the German pilot’s view of her. Another neighbour, Mr McConnell used a bin lid on his head for protection and while all of that seems funny now we were really afraid at the time. Inside Sinclairs’ shelter they had a family friend who kept repeating throughout the raid ‘that wicked old man again’. Eventually my dad built an air raid shelter in the back garden following government instructions on the plan.

In those days you started work early on and I worked as a stitcher in Leacocks & Company on the Ormeau Road. They made fancy linens and pillowcases and I moved to Ewarts where I was more involved in war work which paid better money. In fact I can remember the forewoman at Lecocks complaining to us that we shouldn’t be interested in money with the Arkroyal sunk. At Ewarts I made tropical trousers, Mae West Khaki tops and sailors’ singlets.

The next day after a raid we tried to go into work as usual and I was able to get a trolleybus which took me to work and I could see beds hanging out of windows in Russell Street and houses completely wrecked. During that time you were exhausted as maybe you had been up all night and then you had to carry on as usual. My sewing skills were pretty useful in wartime as I made dolls for my little sisters, Rosemary and Meta, and others because they could not be bought in the shops at that time.

Barrage balloons went up as the sirens went but they didn’t seem to do much good. One went up at the top of Orangefield Lane, where the Methodist church is today but then it was only fields. During one of the raids we were fortunate to have a ship in port, it may have been the Arkroyal anyway it fired back at the planes but there was still a lot of damage anyway. I had only arrived back from Portavogie with my friend Margery when the Tuesday night Blitz happened we were both lucky to get home alive that night.

The metal railings from our front garden were taken for war recycling and we never got them back. By the end of the war we had hardly an unbroken cup as they could not be easily replaced. I was never hungry and we used the rationing coupons for food and sweets. You could still get raspberry ruffles which I loved and the powdered egg wasn’t all that bad! During the war the bread was more brown than white but it was probably better for us, though sometimes you had to queue up for it. Parsnips were supposed to be used instead of bananas but they weren’t a great success. After the war I remember queuing up for Spanish onions and they tasted great! There was a black market and some with money could get most things they needed but most ordinary people had to do the best they could. Some people tried taking the train to Dundalk and on the whole that worked well as the Freestate was not at war and they had more eggs and butter available than the North which sent produce to the essential services first. My older sister Theresa used the fake tan powder on her legs which she bought at the chemist on North Road. Shoes were hard to get and we knew a shoe mender who made us sandals which may be the reason for my bad feet today! When the Americans came to Belfast my sister dated one of them and mostly all I remember about him was that he had really big feet as I was sent to the shoe menders with a pair of his shoes and he refused to do them as he would have needed to use twice as much material as usual.

Around this time I went to First Aid classes with my friends Kathleen, Emma and Winnie Warnock. These were run by a Mr Hamilton in a little hall at the bottom of Abetta Parade. There was also a prisoner of war camp at site of Orangefield School. Some people would have talked through the wire to the German prisoners but I was to too afraid to do that.

The best thing about the war was the celebrations at the end of it when we all converged on the City Hall to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the prospect of peace. Churchill and his speeches were very important at this time as people were very fearful and the German propaganda on the radio was scary. I never heard Lord Haw Haw on the radio but we read the Telegraph every night and they reported everything that he said.

Elizabeth Pauley (nee Foster)

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