Watching the Belfast Blitz from Afar

This story is taken from an interview with Mae McAree, and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was David Reid, and the transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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The Government had a scheme that all children would be evacuated. We went to Granny’s for about 3 years. Outside Ballynahinch. So we were really in the country. But they heard the bombs and saw Belfast burning. My brother and aunt went up into the mountains and saw Belfast burning, but to me it just sounded like doors rattling. That would be 18-20 miles away.

Before this even, before the blitz my brother and I and my other brother, the 3 of us were walking down the road and this airplane came along — it was a German plane. He was on a recce. It must have been before any of the blitzes. He was doing a wee recce, and he came in over Newcastle [from the South], and he waved. He had a leather hat and all on. I only saw the airplane. My 2 brothers saw this, because they’d be interested in airplanes. Plus my father was in the Air Force, so they were interested in planes. So my brother wrote an article for some wee paper, “Ireland’s own”, I think it was. And he said he’d love to meet the pilot, because he waved and he waved back.
He did [realise it was German], but he didn’t realise the importance of it. I mean, we were only 9 and 10.

They told Granny about the airplanes and all. “He’ll do no harm where he is, up in the sky”. But I remember that blitz. The noise I heard, but they saw the sky burning. Red sky coming up. I didn’t know what it was, you see, cause there’d been no communication.
Well, we had a radio that went by dry battery. Ever heard of a dry battery? And that only went on to 6 o’clock news at night.
So it would have been the next night, you know, before we knew about bombs in Belfast. That’s what the papers said, bombs in Belfast.

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I think they gave as much as they possibly could. I think they gave as much as they possibly could, of ... Well, I suppose that fellows who went to work on the bus would come home saying “Belfast’s flattened”. You’d get a bit of information that way.

We didn’t realise what that was. My mother would have come out all on weekends, and must have come out the following weekend, and said that she was all right. Because we hadn’t a phone, of course, there was no mobile phones.
And I think bakers that would have come out with bread would have being saying that such a street was flattened. But my mother did come out a couple of days later, and said she was all right. The house was all right, and nobody that we knew had been injured. Although there was people in the area at the top of the street had been killed. Manner street. It was a complete, it runs from Claytonville Road to Old Park Road. Manner street. And there was an army encampment there, Goodwood Barracks. Maybe they were after that. Because it was where the landmine landed. And a father and a mother and 2 daughters were killed by the landmine. It hit a house. It hit 4 houses actually.

They got poor ratio — they got the most attacks. There was the baths in the Falls Rd was used as a morgue, and it was packed with bodies. I don’t know — it was only weeks after that I learned much about what had really happened, you know? When you’re 9. although we did listen to the news, and made a lot because of my father being away in the Air Force.

Oh yes, I think they started building the air raid shelters and all, more air raid shelters, and there was a service called the National Fire Service, the NFS, and they would have been round nearly every day checking that all the wee street hydrants were working. And after the blitz, all the blitz squares were cleared and they put these big water tanks … they were actually built, I remember them being built. There was actually one down the road here. There was one — they always called the one in town the “Blitz Square”. Where the electric board on Bridge Street, that was the “Blitz Square”. Those are new buildings. That was all a big water tank, in case there was a blitz on the docks I suppose. Another one.
And then in different places. In Tiffin park Avenue where I lived, there was a First Aid post. And it was kitted out for men to spend the night, so if there was an alarm they’d be on duty. They were on duty all the time. And it was fire warden who were on roofs of buildings. They was to look out for fire-bombs, I suppose, or listen for the aircraft coming. Although I suppose you would have heard it long before that. But they had to be there. I think that you didn’t get the compensation if you weren’t protecting, if you weren’t doing something to protect yourself. I don’t know, I just have that feeling. Maybe so.
Anything that came, we would have been ready for it. After the blitz, I think so.

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