|
 | |  | |
Any 'gom' knew to scram during the war when the air raid sirens sounded an alert, yet I ignored them by just keeping my head down and working on.
It was the day after one of the worst blitz of the Second World War, when Belfast had been the target.
On their first raid of April l6/17,1941, the Germans had hit residential areas, but missed the harbour and Queens Island.
The toll in terms of people killed or injured, and houses destroyed, had been heavy., particularly in north Belfast. Some thought that the bombers had mistaken the waterworks for the harbour.
The Germans must have been amazed to find that Belfast was virtually a 'sitting duck', with only derisory defences -- a thin circle of anti-aircraft balloons and a handful of RAF planes, lamentably few.
Everyone knew they would be back. Thousands of people took refuge on the hills every night, rather than sleep in their beds, yet the toll of casualties was again immense. Whole streets suffered direct hits, and Queens Island and the harbour areas were devastated.
Huge fires were left raging from City Hall to York Road, with Castle Street, Bridge Street and High Street as well.
An appeal had gone out to Dublin for help in fighting the conflagration, and fire brigades from south of the border were hard at work with our own. Meanwhile we strove to get emergency cash relief to some of the shattered civilians venturing out from air raid shelters.
At 8.am I had emerged from Great Victoria Station to find a deserted city, apart that was, from the hundreds clamouring around the forecourt fleeing to the country. A thick pall of dense acrid smoke left only the outlines of buildings visible, and I was at the 'Black Man' before I met a vehicle - it was a primitive Red Cross field ambulance, a plain rectangular box on wheels open at the rear.
I learnt later that they were ferrying dead bodies to the various city baths, which were being used as morgues. In fact I interviewed parties who were doing a round of the baths seeking missing relatives.
I was to spend my day in a totally uninhabitable remnant of what had been the Belfast Area Office of the Assistance Board at Frederick Street, the bomb-scarred carcass of what had once been the old Belfast Victoria Hospital
There I was gathering up a supply of Government forms, a float of cash, and taking my seat in a poky room with only a candle for light, preparing to interview distressed and traumatised victims of a German air raid, many of them bandaged and wearing only night attire, pathetic shell-shocked human beings.
It was after the big air raid of May 5, 1941, and the Germans hadn't gone away, at least not all of them.
The air raid sirens still wailed 'alert, 'all clear' at regular intervals when German reconnaissance planes flew over.
The waiting space was crowded, and when workmen pulled down a dangerous multi-storied gable of a bombed building next door, all the people seated rose with a jump in a knee-jerk reaction thinking it was the 'crump' of still another bomb.
Mercifully I had always been safe in my bed 20 miles away when bombs had fallen. The drone of heavy engines overhead, and the spreading red glow in the sky over Belfast, had been all that we had witnessed. Just a few times we heard a heavy 'crump'.
A family of four - husband, wife and two children - had invaded us as refugees, and they were terrified. 'Do you think they will come here?' wailed the bomb-shocked mother. The husband was an employee of Shorts, and from a hint that he dropped we learnt that radar was at the development stage. 'Before long we'll be able to see the bastard coming over Dover'.
The 'Spitfires' and the Battle of Britain were coming, but meanwhile Belfast and many other British cities remained 'sitting ducks'.
It was four o'clock before I managed to escape for something to eat. Posters had gone up warning of the need to boil all water before using it for human consumption. Every place was closed. The city was dead. Mercifully, an Italian café at Upper Donegal Street still had dry bread and a boiled egg. Hunger was good sauce.
When I got the last train home to Moira, I hadn't even the energy to give a sigh of relief.
| |  | |  |
To add a comment you must first login or join for free, up in the top left corner.
|
|
