Blitz on Woodstock Road

This story is taken from an interview with Alec Thompson at the Royal British legion, Bangor, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Anita Cochrane, transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I was 6 when the war started. A wee nipper. I can’t really remember the day. I just remember the air-raids, the bombs, the blitz. And the air-raid shelters were on our side of the street - Spring street on the Woodstock road. All the shelters were cleaned out, and People used to carry a mattress out and we were let to sleep on the mattress when the parents brought us out.

This night there was an air-raid on, and my aunt lived 2 doors down. So I was standing in her house and the raid was going on. We could see the tracer bullets going up and the Searchlights flashing, they were picking out the Planes in the sky. And then all of a sudden we saw this parachute coming down, and my uncle says “Get in the house”, and we turned and just as we were ready to go into the house there was a big bang, a Massive bang. The landmine had landed not far from where we lived, on the Roseberry road. It blew down 6 houses and damaged a lot of the Rectory house belonging to the chapel on the Woodstock road.

[anyone in the houses?]
I’m not sure. There possibly were. I just can’t remember. There probably were. Because my aunt lived 6 houses beyond where the first 6 were demolished totally by the landmine. Apart from that I can’t remember much.

It blew me off my feet. Just as I opened the door, the blast of it. That was a couple of hundred yards away.

I was only 6 — well, I was 7 actually. I was just excited. I don’t think we were scared. I was excited because my father said “look at the tracer bullets going up!” we were sort of mesmerised. We didn’t realise the seriousness of it all. They were trying times, I suppose. East Belfast didn’t get an awful lot of bombing because they were trying really for the Shipyard and the Aircraft factory. And the planes were coming in over N Belfast, and they saw the Waterworks and thought that was the Lough.

We finally decided we were going to have to move out. So I was down in Lurgan for a while, we got a house in Lurgan, evacuees. My parents came down — well, my Father stayed in Belfast, Mother came down and we lived in a wee house with an old lady in factory lane in Lurgan.

Then we came back to Belfast. The blitz, there was no more bombing of Belfast.

Just living in … There were good times too. The only thing was, there was a shortage of everything — and sweets too. You couldn’t get them. You just had to accept it.

We liked the GIs. They used to come out and give us chocolate and sweets and stuff when we were standing outside. They took pity on us.

The air-raid shelters. From our front window out to the air-raid shelter, it couldn’t have been more than … The air-raid shelter was built mostly on the on the road but also up onto the pavement, so you’d only about … From our to the air-raid shelter,
It was just a big long flat-roofed concrete block. There was 2 doors in it, and you went in and there was wee rooms either side.
Solid concrete.
Everybody used to come out and into them. Just crowded all into them. The whole side of the street I lived in was sheltered.

[More than 20 people?]
Yes.

You just either slept or talked or stood about. There was nothing really you could do. Radio was in its infancy then, in those days. We had no radios then. We had no electricity in the house, it was the old gas mantle then. We never had electricity until I was 14 — I in Belfast tech when we got the electric in. Them was the days

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