大象传媒

YANKEE TEARS IN PORTADOWN.
John Ford is in his seventies now and works as a school Patrol warden in Portadown and he told me about his boyhood days during the War years. John remembers the Americans coming to Portadown along with the British and Belguim troops. The Yanks were billeted around Portadown in buildings that had been commandeered for them. He told me he and the other kids around the town would hound the Yanks for chewing gum and cigarettes.
鈥榃e learned to talk Yankee,鈥� he said with a chuckle. 鈥楾heir cigarette packets were different to ours. They would knock the cigarettes out of the corner of the packet and hand you one that way or put one in their mouths straight from the packet. I remember one day, it was market day and they were driving cattle up the town. A Yankee jeep had pulled over near the church out of the way of the cattle. I went over to the jeep and I saw that one of the Yanks was crying. I was only about thirteen and he looked old, but now when I look back he must have been only about eighteen or nineteen. I asked him why he was crying and he said,
鈥業鈥檓 from a farm back home and when I saw the cattle I got real homesick.鈥�
John went on to tell me about the Blackout.
鈥業 remember during the Blackout one night in town one of the men from the town sold a bottle of whiskey to a Yank. The whiskey bottles then had long necks and he had filled up the bottle with cold tea and put a false cork down into the neck, then filled the neck up with whiskey. Well the Yank bought it but the next night he was in town, in a fit, screaming, 鈥淲here鈥檚 that son of a bitch! I鈥檒l kill him if I get my hands on him!鈥�
John also remembered the rationing coupons and he used to get them and sell them to the farmer鈥檚 wives. John ran away once from home and stayed in St Patrick鈥檚 Hall in Thomas Street with the Yanks and they would put their great coats over him as he bedded down at night. 鈥楾hey trained here before they went to war,鈥� John said, 鈥榃ent on manoeuvres and the Belgium soldiers couldn鈥檛 speak any English and the girls used to laugh at them when they tried to chat them up. I used to mitch school so I could see them use pontoon bridges during exercises. They鈥檇 bring lorries over the bridges to the other side. They were exercising all over the place, on the river Bann and the Blackwater, everywhere.
We used to bring tea and soda bread and butter to the British soldiers who were on exercises in the fields. I remember one young soldier who had to guard a particular corner and he was there for days. I brought him out tea every morning. The British drank gallons of tea. Later when they went to war we heard they all got killed.
There were people from Belfast, evacuees, staying in different places. There was a family in Derryvale Orange Hall, what was her name, now? Ma Kelly, I think, anyway she used to have charms for different things. I remember one man went to her with a toothache and she gave him a charm and all his teeth fell out. He said that it sure did cure his toothache.