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I was brought up in Holywood, County Down, which at that time was a garrison town. The population was about 3000+ in the barracks, a regiment of about 600 men and their families, you’re maybe talking about another 1000 people.

You could have said that it was the start of the black market, because anything you wanted to get was reserved for cooks. Things were scarce. In the 1930’s people hadn’t enough money, and while there was rationing they probably didn’t eat much better than before rationing. People didn’t have the money to buy what was there, but they got by — There were other ways and means of getting food, as is always the case. If you had money, if you were prepared to break the law, you’ll always get what you need, and things that you want too, whether you needed them or not!
This went on, and we suddenly found all these empty houses that they’d requisitioned, someone’s private house. Maybe the house next door was empty, then all of a sudden there were twenty soldiers in it, out of nowhere! They had to be fed and watered; well the army fed them, but the water came from our supply. The Holywood waterworks at the time was quite small, enough to cope with the population, but all of a sudden over a couple of months, you had maybe 20,000 soldiers who all had to be watered, washed and so forth, and all out of one water supply which was continually rationed. Because of the low level of supply it just couldn’t cope, with the result that we had water shortages continually. If we had a good wet summer, you didn’t do too badly, but if you’d a dry summer.…!
The troops started to build up and things got scarce. If you go back to the time that the Americans arrived, they came in great numbers as well, and how all these people fit is beyond me, because every place that could take people was occupied.
They weren’t the best paid — I think the Canadians were — but they were always short of money. They had unlimited supplied, the best of bacon and you-name-it, meat and their own particular dishes. They were forever bartering and people who knew them could have bought from them. That was more or less what we went through from the start. It started off a small population and suddenly increased out of all proportion. I would have been about 14½ when the war started.

As the war progressed, there were German prisoners being kept outside Holywood, and then the Americans started bringing their own — American soldiers who had defaulted in some way. They were moving them from the Belfast side of Holywood to a big camp on the Bangor side of Holywood. Manacled together, they took up practically the whole width of the street, more guards round them than enough and they were moved to somewhere outside Holywood.
At Grey Point, near Holywood bay, there was a gun in placement. I think the idea behind it was in case any submarines came up the Lough. There was one on the opposite side about Kilroot. Apparently the Holywood men let off a round by accident and the Kilroot men immediately replied — they thought they were under attack! But that was really the only time a shot was fired.

I didn’t see any German bombers during the blitz in Belfast, but I heard them — you couldn’t miss them! Just outside of Holywood, there was a big aircraft factory and it happened at the time there was an aircraft carrier there. The noise was unbelievable and then the bombs started to drop. You could hear them coming, they had a very particular sound. They dropped bombs and landmines here, there and everywhere. At that time I was in what later became the civil defence and we ended up coming up the Newtownards Road looking for people and bodies and that. But we’ll not go into that. After that we had no trouble, but we were near enough at the extreme edge of the range of the planes they had at that time.

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