Preparing Defences for the Belfast Blitz

This story is taken from an interview with Mary Mulligan, 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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I remember just before, I don’t think I ever told you this. When we were at school, before, when the war broke out in ’38-39, when we were at school and we tried gas masks. They came into school, and we had to get gas masks and all. Somebody was just saying, they had one the other day, and I don’t know where they got it. And it was like a smell of asbestos in it — you weren’t allowed to wear it too long.
One of the plays that they’re doing at the moment, one of the schools, and they’ve got the gas masks. For the children they were like Mickey Mouse faces — the childrens’ ones were funny faces ones.
There was a big one that you put babies into. We had one of those.
But when they’re a wee bit older, they’re maybe a year old. They were funny, like Mickey Mouse faces on those. Because we had 2 of them in our house.
And you had to carry them when you went to school.

And all the ration books — I got rid of all of those about 5-6 years ago. The sweet coupons, clothing coupons. And especially now when my grand-nieces and nephews are asking me, what happened during the war? And my sister and I were in the same house during the war, and she tells a completely different story from me. You wouldn’t think the 2 of us lived in the same house. She told her grandson one thing, and I said to him “I’ll tell you the right way of it”.
I remember mummy putting our Gerard, god bless him he’s dead now, down the stairs and putting the leg out of his pajamas. And our brief didn’t remember that. And I remember that as clear as if it were just yesterday. And the back door blowing in, and the pram was between the back door and the kitchen, and the baby then was 6 wks old, and the back door came in. And you were afraid to go up the stairs to the bathroom in case the windows come in on you. That was the Easter Tuesday one.
The next one, we went to the neighbours next door. My father was in the night shift at Shorts. We went in and sat under the table and under the stairs in the house next door.
That was the usual places.
He was a Frenchman, and he used to take us in next door. And I was never as glad to hear a front door key turning as the next morning, when my daddy was home. And then the next one, he was there on his own. And that was the night the incendiary bomb went into one of the houses, and a man came out and closed his door and said “there’s a bomb in my house”. Closed the door, and nobody could get in. They had to put sand on it. They broke the door down, and they went in and put sand and all on it. And the ARP wardens said when they went in — you know the wee songs, the wee war songs? Elizabeth was saying her wee daughter was doing a play in school with it. They were singing, not even “run, rabbit, run” but “We’ll meet again”. You know all them old ones? Well, I used to be a wee one, and we were talking about gas masks?

“I’ve a wee gas mask, and I’m working out a plan,
and all the kiddies think that I’m a bogeyman.
The girls all smile, and bring their friends to see
the nicest looking warden in the ARP!
When there’s a raid on, listen to the cry.
An aeroplane, an aeroplane, a way up in the sky!
I go helter-skelter, don’t come after me.
For you’ll not get in my shelter cause it’s far too wee!”

Now that was their song. And “Hey little hen, when, when when …” do you know that one?

“Hey little hen, when, when when
will you lay me an egg for my tea?
Say little hen, when, when when
will you supply one for me?
Get into you N-E-S-T
Do your B-E-S-T
Get it off your C-H-E-S-T
And I will do the rest.”

Did anyone tell you that the sound of the warning was different from the sound of the all-clear? When they were warning you it was a big wailing, up and down. But when it was all over it just went straight.
It went straight, that was the all-clear.
If you slept through the warning, you’d wake up for the all clear.

As I was telling your, our Kathy was married on Easter Monday 1941, that was the first of the sirens. And our Kathleen’s husband says “Mum, we’ll get the children up to the country”. He says “that’s a warning”. It was the sirens that went, but it might have been, he said it was reconnaissance planes that went. Taking photographs. A plane taking photographs. And that’s what it was.

[how many times did the sirens go off?]
Oh, just the once. Then the next thing you heard was the bombs dropping.
Oh aye, but we did have warnings and nothing happened.
That Easter Monday, it was during the day it went. But they think it was a plane taking photographs, what they call a reconnaisance flight.
And you’d have known the sound of a German plane. Its engine was completely different to a British one. It had also a very steady hum, you know? And you could easily have … Well, that was during the raid. You could recognise them, you know?

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