Me, Ena and my Mother, Eva.
My memories of WWII and the Belfast Blitz
Written by Audrey N. Mccormick
I was born Audrey Neill on the 13th of June, 1935 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. As was common in those days, I was born at home, in a small apartment above a sweetie shop on the Crumlin Road. Later that year, my parents George and Eva, moved into a house nearby on Heather Street. My sister Georgina (Ena), named after my father, was born fifteen months later.
One of my earlier memories is of my mother carrying me down the stairs of that house. At the foot of the stairs was a massive door with an inset of stained glass at the top. When the sun was out, a rainbow of beautiful colors covered the staircase. It was on these stairs that my mother whispered into my tiny ear, “There’s a big war on, love.”
Audrey (about 18 months old) and Ena (about 6 months old)
I began hearing that word more frequently over the coming weeks, sitting around the radio with my parents and infant sister. A man named Hitler threatening, “The Germans will take Europe! We will win the war!" When Hitler claimed Poland was part of Germany and attacked, Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, made an address on the radio, announcing that the Nazis had 48 hours to pull out of Poland.
Poland surrendered to the Nazis on September 27th, 1939. World War II had begun, and Hitler would soon take more countries. I was 4 and Ena was 2 when the Germans began attacking Britain. London was burning.
We hoped we were safe as Ireland was neutral during the war, but Northern Ireland was (and still is) part of Great Britain.
Belfast, where we lived at the time, was a modest city with a population of 438,000 in 1939, but with much industry. There were many factories, an airport, and the shipyard where my father worked, Harland & Wolff. At that time the shipyard was used for building aircraft carriers used in the war. The Germans were determined to destroy all of it, and the city would be very exposed in an attack.
Fortunately, our growing family (my brother, Ken, was born around this time) had moved farther up the Cave Hill, to a place above The Old Park Road called Silverstream Gardens, a community of about 40 houses. We lived in number 29. I would eventually live there until I married and it was to be the birthplace of my two younger siblings, Yvonne and Eric. I have fond memories of that home. My father would send us to the fields at the top of the street to gather cow manure for his garden. He would plant many different vegetables, my favorite was the lettuce. I think I got my love of gardening from him.
I was six years old on April 7th/8th, 1941. My sister and I were playing with some neighbor children outside when one of the children pointed to the sky and said “Look, it’s a Gerry Plane!” I still remember all of us kids looking into the sky, watching the plane with the huge Nazi symbol on both sides, coming down below the clouds momentarily, and then disappearing above them again. We ran home to tell our mother, who was already listening to the report of the plane on the radio. It had been spotted taking photos all over Belfast and mapping out the area to prepare for a raid. I had very little understanding of what that meant at the time, but I was about to find out.
Around six 'o'clock that evening my Grandmother and uncles on my mother’s side came to our house to discuss what was happening. It was agreed that because our house was farther away from the industrial part of the City that they should all come stay with us until the immediate threat was over. They were to come the following evening, My Granny would sleep with me, and my uncles, Herbie, Freddie and Bobby and his wife would bring mattresses to sleep on. They lived about a mile down the hill from us. When they left our house that evening we walked them out and watched them walking down the street that would take them to the turn at Ballysillan Road that led to their home. It was a custom for them to turn around and wave at the bottom of the street, they always had before, but they never turned around, they slowly turned the corner without looking back. I have never forgotten that. It was as if on some level, they already knew their fate.
My Grandmother, Latisha Stanton is second from the left. Uncle Freddie 4th from left (in the doorway).
The sirens went off after dark. Every household was given instructions, one was to use black covers over the blinds on all windows. We closed all the blinds and put the fire out. We took cover under the stairs as the first bombs came whistling down. My mother was holding my infant brother Ken while my father held Ena in his arms. At the age of six I had no real concept of the danger we faced, and I remember thinking that the whistling sound the bombs made as they descended was lovely. I was about to comment on the nice sound to my parents when suddenly one bomb landed so close that it shook the house. That was when I began to feel afraid. There were many other close calls during the night. I will never forget the sound of the bombs when they struck their target. So loud! That night seemed to last forever.
At first light the sirens sounded again, this time giving us the “all clear”. Both my parents were very concerned about their families. My mother was crying.
We had a great view of the whole town from the front of our house, and Ena and I followed our father outside to look down at the City. I had never seen anything like it before, and never have since. The perfect, ordinary City that had been there yesterday was now in ruins. Many of the buildings were no longer there and the ones that still stood were in flames and unrecognizable. My memory is not as sharp as it once was, but the way Belfast looked, the red sky and the flames that terrible day is something that is still very vivid in my mind.
My mother’s brother, my uncle Earnest, and his wife Maude came by, they lived just a few doors up the road from us. They sat and talked with my parents for a while. I recall Uncle Ernest saying “Well, if they’re dead, they’re dead.” At age six our understanding of death is limited. I understood that when you die you don’t come back, but as a young child I didn’t quite grasp the finality of it, I didn’t really think anything bad could happen to anyone.
I looked out the window towards where my missing relatives lived and saw the area was covered in flames. Smoke filled the sky. My mother, usually clear headed and composed, could not sit still. She would pace around the room and say “They should be here by now.” Then she would sit for a few minutes, then stand and walk to the window and ask “Why are they not here yet?” I remember wondering, “Why is everyone so worried? After all, they will be here soon, they said they would."
Soon my father’s family arrived. They reported that whole streets of houses had been hit, that people were standing in the rubble screaming and crying. Hours had passed and there was still no word about my mother’s family, so my father went down the Loney, the unpaved lane that led to the Crumlin road. It seemed the farther down the hill he went, the worse the damage. Head down, he walked to where my mother’s family lived. There he finally looked up and was frozen in disbelief. The house was gone.
The whole street was completely destroyed. He stumbled around, feeling lost, occasionally speaking with other locals who were also in shock. Bodies were being laid out in rows in what was left of the street. How could he go home and tell my mother that her family was dead? He walked around the rubble all day and did not arrive home until late. By the time he arrived, I’m sure that my mother knew that her family didn’t survive.
The next day my parents took Ena and I on a country bus to Cookstown to stay with our Aunt Alice and Uncle Willie. The two of us were to stay there until the war was over. My father, a Foreman at Harland & Wolff, had to stay in the city and Ken was still an infant and too young to leave our mother. During the war many children were sent away to safe places in the country, and most did not have their parents accompany them on their journey. Our parents said goodbye and left Ena and I there, in this strange new place with relatives we had never met before.
Although I was a shy child, I settled in quickly and soon Cookstown became my home. We lived in a large house with my aunt and uncle and their two daughters, my cousins Joy and Ida. They were close to my age and we all got on well. The back of the house was a cemetery surrounded by a large stone wall. My bedroom window faced the back, but it never frightened me. Uncle Willie was the Caretaker and Gravedigger, to dig graves he used only a shovel.
We lived in Cookstown until the war ended and even attended school there. I loved walking all the roads, one road had what they called a firth, upon a hill in one of the fields where a clump of trees grew, and it was said that a wolf lived there. There was a small, unpaved road near the property that led to Rutliches Farm, and we were sent there often to get milk. Sometimes gypsies would camp in caravans on that road and Auntie Alice warned us to stay away from them. I must have walked it a hundred times. Aunt Alice kept chickens and my job was to collect the eggs.
My cousin Ida had roaring red hair which was wound in cloth every night to make ringlets for the next day. The house had no electricity or heated water, we had a small outhouse at the back of the main house near the chicken coop, in the night we used chamber pots. We used oil lamps for light and fire for warmth, there was also a large coal burning stove to cook with.
I'm sure that many people would see this way of life as a burden, but I have never been a city person and was always in my element when I was outdoors. Living in Cookstown was one of the greatest adventures of my life, and of all the places I have been in my entire life, Cookstown is my favorite place in the world.
Cookstown family back row clockwise: Willie, Alvin, Willie. front row: Ida (Mullan), Ida, Joy, Shirley, Alice
When the war finally ended and we returned home, many things had changed. All the metal and iron had been removed from every house, all the gates and railings were taken to be used for the war effort, and there were air-raid shelters on every street. Fields had grown in place of the houses that were destroyed in the blitz, some with grass as high as my waist that I could hide in. I found it comforting as it reminded me of Cookstown.
We settled back into our old lives quickly, as children tend to do. My family grew with the addition of my siblings, Yvonne and Eric.
I had missed listening to my favorite radio shows in the evenings. “The man in black” came on every Saturday and every week the whole family crowded around the radio to listen. The war was over. We were home.
From left, back: Ena, Ken, my father George, my mother Eva, me
front: Yvonne, Eric
The Belfast Blitz was one of the largest strike forces during the war, and Belfast was later described as the most undefended and unprepared City to be attacked in all of Europe. There were only four air-raid shelters in the entire town. Belfast was bombed 3 times between April and May that year, the first attack being the most ruthless with 300 bomber planes against a defenseless city and 900 Men, women, and children perished on the night of the first attack, with some 1,200 injured. Half of the houses in Belfast were destroyed.
The Falls Road Baths was a public indoor swimming pool, and following the Blitz the pool was drained and used to store the remains of the deceased in hopes that family members would find their loved ones and give them a proper burial. My Father and Uncle Earnest went there in hopes of finding the remains of my Mother’s family, but to no avail. They were most likely buried in an unmarked grave along with hundreds of other souls whose bodies were never identified.
The attack on Belfast created the second greatest loss of life during WWII in a single night raid, second only to London.
About a year ago my youngest daughter asked me to write down my memories of the war. She gave me a book with blank pages and encouraged me to write this. I want to thank Heather for her encouragement in writing this and her help editing.
I dedicate this brief memoir to my sister, Ena, who was at my side through all of it and to all my family in Cookstown and Belfast.
