��ѿ��ý

World War Two Memories
by Colin Starrat

My wife Jean was born locally in Ballyarnet just outside Derry, and can remember at the age of about five or six the bombers coming over and trying to bomb the dockyard at Lisahally and missing and the bombs landing in Messines Park, and causing a lot of damage there.
She lived in a row of house that have now disappeared which had an Anderson shelter but they never used it all through the war.
She can also remember the women crossing the border and smuggling butter,eggs,flour.sugar, and anything else that they could lay their hands on, put it this way they never went short, the only thing that they would be feared of was “The Water Rats” which was the local name for the customs men, who’d try and catch them bringing the stuff back across the border, but the women used to outflank the customs most times, but the odd occasion they were caught and lost the lot, but she said they were the good old days.

As for my own experience I was only three and living in England just outside the town of High Wycombe which was about a mile from H.Q. Bomber Command, and on the hill behind our house was a big searchlight which was used each night to pick out the German bombers that tried to wipe the headquarters buildings but never did.
I felt at times that we were piggy in the middle as we had the blitz one side of us and the bombing of Coventry the other side.
We may have suffered in England with the rationing, but I think we were grateful for what we had with your 2 ounces of cheese, and your 2 ounces of butter, and what ever else you got.
When I sit down and think now and think that we are the last of a generation that was born through a period of history that will never be repeated in what is left of our lifetime and for the future generations to come.
But like all conflicts there were the characters who stood out, like the women smuggling,and the customs trying to catch them, and the warden going round making sure that you had the blackout curtains in place, and if you didn,t then the cry went out “PUT THAT LIGHT OUT”.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.