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The Second World War was known in Ireland as the 'Emergency'. Many had mixed feelings about which side to support, but the bombing of Dublin tipped the scales in favour of Britain.
It seems that a German bomber lost his way, and anxious to get home jettisoned his load over what turned out to be part of Dublin's north city. I was a teenager at the time, and was fast asleep one night, when my mother came into my room and shook my shoulder asking me:
"Are you frightened? They're bombing us!"
Of course I had heard nothing to be frightened of, but my mother was terrified, so I sat up and together we listened to the ack-ack guns, which were still firing, though no plane was shot down.
Next day, it was the talk of the town, and many pictures appeared in the papers. A large section of the area known as North Strand had been demolished and there were craters in the street, in one of which a gas main had been severed, and was blazing merrily away. At the time the use of gas in the home was severely rationed, so with typical Dublin insouciance one old lady had brought her kettle out and was boiling it over the broken gas main, and serving tea to anyone who wanted it! I do wish I had kept the photograph from the daily paper, but I was young enough then not to realise the value of such things.
Gas was not the only thing rationed -- we were also short of tea and sugar and all other fuels, and there was a brisk trade in 'coupons' which were needed for most of the basic shopping. Clothing coupons were particularly scarce, right up to the late 1940s; I got married in 1946 and had a very small trousseau due to the lack of them.
Friends in the north of Ireland suffered similarly, though they were most short of eggs, butter and meat, so there was quite a lot of dealing in smuggled goods -- butter and meat in exchange for tea and sugar, whenever one visited one's friends in Belfast.
Ireland was officially neutral, but being Irish we also claimed to be 'neutral on your side', especially when Belfast was bombed,
the date of which escapes me; however, dozens of fire brigades from all over Dublin and other towns between here and the border went racing north to help to put out the fires; it did not appear to occur to anyone that half of Dublin could have burned down without a fire brigade to come to the rescue! The help was very much appreciated, and I recall some years later there was a big thank-you celebration in Belfast for our gallant firemen.
Those were very different days -- we did not have much, but we did not seem to need it, and I often think we were happier then than people are now in the'greed culture' that has developed with our prosperity.

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