大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with John Luke, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Mark Jeffers, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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The next thing I remember, the Army came to put demolition charges below Harryville bridge. There was really a threat of invasion at that time, people were given instructions of what to do in the event of invasion. Not to come out onto the streets, to stay inside and leave it to the Army or the Home Guard or whatever to deal with the situation if they could. It was a real threat. Harryville Bridge, all the Bridges I'm sure were mined. That鈥檚 one I remember. They did it on a Sunday, I can remember that. McBurney had 3 big Esso glass signs along the front of the garage. They used the explosives to blow holes in the stonework of the bridge. The first one went off, the 3 blasts, the glass walls landed down around my ears standing at the door watching.
The things that stick in your memory

A lot of things were happening. Road blocks, they were the next things that were set up. You had 3 concrete columns across the road. They'd probably have been maybe 3ft square, and they would have been possibly 6ft high, solid concrete. 3 holes thru each 1. You'd one there, one in the middle of the road, one on the other side. You'd have about 3 sets of those inside maybe 50 yards. The one half of this one, the holes had railway lines put into them, that blocked that. The next one, that side was blocked. The next one, that side was blocked. So it was a chicane you had to go through. This made the Home Guard work easier doing road checks, so only 1 car could come into it at a time. They had lines there to block the other half, to completely block the road if it was necessary.
When I was in the Home Guard they had plans afoot. I actually spent a week learning to lay mines. The idea was to block the road with mines laid either side of the road, so getting off the road wasn't an option to go round them. This was all part of the defence system. It was really, people were frightened at that time. One night in particular, I don鈥檛 know what happened, but the alarm up that the Germans had landed at Cushendall.
The local Home Guard unit at Clough headed along the Cushendall road and dug the road up. They dug 2 trenches across it to stop vehicles coming along it. It turned out it was a false alarm. There was all sorts of rumours going about, one thing and another, telling everybody to watch for 5th Columnists. 鈥淲alls have ears, careless talk costs lives鈥�. All these things you weren鈥檛 supposed to do. But by and large, in Ballymena the town just carried on as usual.

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