大象传媒

I was stationed at RAF Ballykelly in 1943/4 and was demobbed from there in November 1945. RAF Ballykelly was a part of Coastal Command and aircraft called Liberators which carried out anti submarine patrols in the North Atlantic were based there. One night I was one of a group of girls, out riding our bicycles on the local roads and we passed some of the Canadian Air Force air crew who were out for a walk and were due to fly out on patrol later that night. As we passed the air crew, they wolf whistled at us and we in turn called some light hearted banter back at them. The next morning we heard that they had all been killed in an air crash. They ran into a fog coming back, and were only minutes from the camp when they crashed at Magilligan Point. Everyone in the camp was devastated at the loss of these men. Another incident occurred during my time in Ballykelly. There was a local house in the village, just across the road from the camp entrance, where all the service personnel were made welcome. You would just walk into the kitchen and the tea pot seemed to be on all the time, the lady also baked scones and pancakes, and these were set out on the table when you called. You could get as much as you could eat for a sixpence. There was a saucer set on the table and you would just throw your sixpence into it. The boys (service personnel) would wash up the cups, it was a home from home. We used to go out into the yard and sit and talk, just like home. The lady who ran the house was called Ma Hassan, she had two sons, one worked in the bank and eventually married a girl from the camp with whom I was friendly, she was called Sally Kent and the other was a bus driver. One day the bus driver son was driving his bus through Ballykelly village when he encountered an American Army convoy of trucks. The convoy was being escorted by an American Army dispatch rider and Ma Hassan鈥檚 son was driving his bus ahead of that. As the convoy was going through the village, the dispatch rider thought the bus was holding them back, and he got very irate about this. The dispatch rider rode his motor cycle alongside the bus and shot the bus driver dead at the wheel of his bus. I could never understand the Americans. Ma Hassan was so good to us, she was a mother to us all, and then for that to happen to her own son. The American dispatch rider was swiftly sent out of the country

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