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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Eileen Linder on behalf of Pauline Margaret Diplock and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

UPROOTING

I had a blissfully happy childhood in Dunmurry until the war occurred. My father had been in the First World War, but decided that he had again to “do his bit”. He joined up and was posted to various places, one of them being West Africa, but I was only 12 and never understood why he was there. When the blitz came, I remember all of us being huddled under the stairs, and being very frightened. At that time we had a little holiday bungalow in Bangor, and my mother decided it would be safer for us all there. It was a big disruption for me and my brother Tom, as he was at Dunmurry Public elementary school, and I was at Methodist college. However we settled happily when I changed to Glenlola, and tom went to the grammar school. By 1944, we were very aware of the preparations for D-Day. Tom saw the practice landings on Ballyholme beach, and I still have photos of the American Red Cross club at Pickie, a photo of an American pilot and his B52, and one of a Canadian outside the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast. It had been a very momentous time of change in our lives.

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