大象传媒

Yes, the memories I have of growing up in the Collon in Derry city during the Second World War.
I remember clearly the day war broke out. I was born in September 1934, so I 鈥榓s almost five years old. My mother and me were standing at our gate watching the people coming up from Mass. Johnny Walsh, who lived in Messines Park was a friend of the family. He came along and said to my mother, 鈥淭hey are at it again, Eileen, war has just been declared.鈥� I recall the preparations made, we were issued our gas masks, and we carried these to school. A man used to come round the school occasionally to remind us why we had the gas masks and how we should use them. I attended St. Eugene鈥檚, referred to as The Rosie.

The Blackout.
Every night before dark, my father would put up the dark shutters on all the windows, no light was allowed to show through. The Air Raid Warden would patrol the streets making sure there was not a glimmer of light from our homes. He would bang on the door if any adjustments had to be made. The lampposts had a band of white paint around them, near the bottom. This was to allow people to see them, the light from the lamps was very weak! The edges of steps were also painted white, as I recall, especially in steps going into buildings and the like. I could be wrong, but I faintly remember men who smoked pipes used to have them upside down when out in the street. They had the top of the pipe covered with a small metal cap. I suppose this was to prevent the very faint light of tobacco from being seen by an aeroplane. It sounds so silly now, and even laughable, but the blackout was a very serious business. Cars, infrequent as they were in our area had to have dark material over the headlamps; there was a small horizontal slit across the material to allow a small beam to come out. You may wonder how a five or six year old would be aware of these things. I put this down to the many walks I had with my father through my growing up years. He used to explain so many things to me; they were a kind of precursor to education field trips, so common now.
The Sirens and the Air Raid Shelters.
There was an air raid shelter on Kelly鈥檚 Field between Maybrook Terrace and St. Patrick鈥檚 Church. It was at the corner of the field just before the entrance that led to Maybrook House. These were made of reinforced concrete with concrete seating all around the inside. The sirens would occasionally go off, all except one, proved to be false alarms. My father had us well prepared for any eventuallity. Every night when going to bed, we folded up our clothes and shoes, wrapped them in a blanket and tied them with a belt. He prepared a Valor Oil Stove, checked the wick and filled it with oil. A few blankets were also wrapped around it and secured with a belt. We had instructions that, if any of us heard the siren, we were to make sure every body was awake and then head straight for the air raid shelter. No mean feat, come to think of it, for small youngsters awakened at 2 or 3 in the morning There was my sister, older by one year, my only brother, at that time, who was two years younger than me. He had to be carried. We would arrive in the shelter, my father would light the stove and we would get fully dressed and lie down to sleep on the concrete seat, or the floor if there was no space. When the all-clear came we would return to the house.
The night the Collon, and particularly Messines Park, were bombed I was 6 鈥�/2 years old. I remember very clearly the siren going off, and the drone of the aeroplane. We all got up, I rushed down the stairs and half-way down there was a very loud explosion and I was knocked unconscious by our front door coming in on top of me. The first and only time I was accidentally unconscious. I waked up being carried over my father鈥檚 shoulder looking back up the Buncrana Road. I remember a get of gas shooting up into the sky. I found out later that a gas main pipe had burst on the road mid-way up St. Patrick鈥檚 Terrace. The bomb had landed in the sandpit across the Lough Swilly railway line that ran along the edge of Buncrana Road, just behind Collon Terrace. I was told later that the bomb was attached to a parachute. Rumours came in later years that the bomb was actually heading towards the church and someone claimed they had seen the hand of St. Patrick鈥檚 statue divert the bomb to the sandpit. I will leave that to the story-tellers. The blast did a lot of structural damage to houses in Collon Terrace, Maybrook and St. Patrick鈥檚. All of this is imbedded in my memory like a photographic negative, just waiting to be processed into different shades of grey by a simple recall. We had no coloured photographs in those days. When we arrived in the shelter, several other people had already arrived. And more followed us. I remember Fr. O鈥橪oughlin (I think that was his name), the parish priest arrivmg with his St. Bernard dog. He talked to us, then said a prayer and gave us his blessing. We were a mixed group of neighbours, protestant and catholic. That was my first experience of an ecumenical services
In later years it came to me that this was an indication of the close knit and friendly community I was brought up in. We were taken up to my granny鈥檚 in Argyle Terrace in the early morning after the all-clear. Army trucks collected us. I should mention here that when we were running to the air raid shelter I recall many trucks and tanks moving up the Buncrana Road away from the docks. Those are my recollections of the night we were bombed. Following that night my family went to live for over a year in Inch. We had a small little house owned by one of my mother鈥檚 brothers. He lived in Sligo. It was at Inch that my second youngest brother was born. We returned in 1942 to our renovated home in Maybrook.
Other memories of the war years, and though a lot has been written and talked about that period, there are a number of events I have never heard mentioned.
These involved the British Soldiers and the American Soldiers, Marines and Navy. On Saturday mornings, I remember well because we were not at school, the British Army used to arrive in their tanks and drive around the fields and plantation at the back of our houses. This would have been where St. Aiden鈥檚 Terrace now stands. In those far off days between St. Brigid鈥檚 and New Street (commonly referred to as Jampot Row) there was open space, likewise at the end of St. Francis Terrace, there was a little stream next to Coyle鈥檚 house. Charlie Coyle that is. There was nothing but green fields leading up to the plantation (plantin, in our parlance). We used to get rides in the tanks and join them in their exercises. I suppose you would call them manoeuvres now. But with the Americans it was very much different. Groups of us children would be brought down to the ships in the docks and there we would see films (movies, they called them). We would also be shown round the ship and sit up on the big guns. We would have tea and biscuits followed by ice cream, real ice cream. Going home we each were given a large brown envelope and told not to open them or our parents would know. Inside were sweets and a pair of nylons for our mothers. We never had sweets in those days, so you can imagine the joy they gave us. I remember also on some Saturdays we would be asked to go up to the Rialto Cinema (I think it was the Rialto though I could be corrected in that) we would go at a certain time. When we got there, gangs of us, the American Marines would be there, getting us into line.
We were each given a bag of sweets and then taken in to see the film. Some of the Marines came with us; I think to keep us under control.
I suppose you just cannot imagine the joy and happiness of having sweets and getting into the films free. Then there were the hayrides organised by the U.S. Navy. There were collection points; we had to be at the bottom of the Buchan Road. Along would come the lorry carts drawn by enormous horses and the carts packed with bales of hay. The navy would be in cowboy outfits with guitars and banjos. We would all pile on and join in the sing-song. Little did we know that we would ever be on a

Hayride, just as we seen it in the Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey films. We went down below Muff, singing and laughing all the way, into a field and there we had a bar-be- cue. I am sure many people in Derry had ever heard of a bar-be-cue in those days.
We children in the Collon were also 鈥榗asualties鈥� of war. When we returned to our home from Inch, we were asked to take part in first aid practice, which meant nothing to us at the time. We went up to the bombed out houses at the corner of Messines Park. There we were put into ground floor and upstairs room and told what to do and what to expect. The army would throw in fake smoke bombs, then the nurses and doctors would rush in and bandage up our 鈥榖roken legs, arms and busted heads and faces 鈥�. The firemen and soldiers would arrive through the doors and up ladders through windows and carry us out on stretchers or over their shoulders. We would be taken into ambulances and that was the finish of it. I cannot recall ever having been given sweets 1.
The Shore Patrols were other things I remember. Every night these patrols would walk around the city keeping an eye on the pubs and other areas. There were groups of them, formed by one member from each of the armies or navies in dock at any given day. I remember quite clearly single groups made up of one from Russia, France, Britain, Holland, and America. They had the letters M.P. printed in white on the front of their helmets, I presume that meant Military Police. If there was any trouble on the street, or any pub, from any of the many soldiers or navy men, they would sort it out. I remember on one or two occasions the patrols laying into them with batons. Things haven鈥檛 changed much in Deny over the years.
These are my memories, and I emphasise 鈥榤y鈥�, unique to me. Memory is of the present, it is in the present recalling the past. Memory can be distorted by later events, by what we read and so on. But may of these, as I mentioned, are stamped into my consciousness like photographic negatives, just waiting to come to light by recollection.
As I talk I just heard today that it is sixty years since the concentration camps were liberated in Europe. I remember that time very well particularly because of what followed. Everyone was talking about these death camps. Shortly afterwards the children in the Derry schools were taken in groups to the Strand Cinema to watch the liberation of Belsen. I do not know the reason for this as we were fairly young, I would have been eleven. I can still see the heaps of corpses and the people starved, walking like skeletons. Many years later I trained as a Registered General Nurse in England. One of my colleagues in training was a child inmate in Auswitch concentration camp. It all came back to me having seen the television commemorating sixty years since the end of the Second World War. I remember that day very, very well, the day my youngest brother was born, 8 May 1945.
A neighbour suggested that he be given the first names, Winston Churchill, I am sure he is glad my mother never took her up on the suggestion.
These are my memories of growing up during the war years. For us, as children, they were exciting and often happy carefree times. However we were oblivious to the terrible fear and pain that must have been experienced by our parents and their adult neighbours and of course the frightening loss and devastation suffered by those who survived the direct hit at Messines Park.

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