sets of parents were ageing and Jimmy’s mother was dying of cancer. If they crossed the Atlantic that summer they might not be able to get back again. But if they didn’t go now, with war in sight, they might never see their parents again.
Finally, they decided they would return home. They arrived back in Belfast in August 1939. A month later they opened the newspaper to find that the ship on which they had travelled back had been torpedoed as it made the return journey to Canada.
There was no problem with Jimmy finding work. As a skilled mechanic he was taken on at Shorts immediately. Within days he was assembling parts of the fuselage of the Sunderland flying boats which were to patrol the western approaches.Finding a house was another matter. Houses were in very short supply in the city and Polly found that living with her McGillvray in-laws was even worse than being homesick. Davy and Eddie were resentful and unsettled and complained continually about the absence of candy and ice-cream parlours. They compared everything in Belfast with what they had left behind in Canada and hadn’t a good word to say for anything.
When the Blitz began it was poor Ronnie who was terrified. Always the quietest and most thoughtful of the three, he became anxious when the first barrage balloons appeared in the sky. Although Polly tried to explain they were there to protect them, Ronnie was oppressed by the great, grey shapes and remained even more anxious about them than about the planes that were soon making raids on the docks, shipyards and aircraft factories.
Night after night Polly lay awake listening, for when Jimmy worked a double shift, he would be at work when the raiders came. She learnt, as everyone in Britain learnt, to fear moonlight, those beautiful clear nights when the raiders could find their targets more easily. But the worst night of all, the one that would remain forever in the minds of those who lived through it, Jimmy was at home, asleep by her side in the new house they had finally acquired.
In the morning they smelt the smoke and the taint of rubber in the air. When they listened to the radio at six o’clock, before the boys were awake and heard the toll of dead and missing, they kissed each other and shed a few tears. Hours later the phone rang and a neighbour of Jimmy’s parents told him that his brother was missing. The police had called on his father and suggested that someone should go down to St George’s Market to see if he was there. That was where the bodies were being laid out for identification.
Jimmy had found his brother’s body, undamaged and unmarked, a victim of blast. By a strange chance he lay beside three of his old school friends whose battered remains had been dug from the rubble of the back-to-back houses down by the docks where Jimmy and his brother had begun their lives. He was looking down at them unable to grasp how four of the five wee lads who kicked a tin can round the street together, should be together once again, when the mother of one of them appeared, bent over and leaning on a stick. Jimmy had stood and wept and the bereaved mother had comforted him.
Although she worried about her family, the war years were not as hard on Polly as they were on many other women. She was practical and cheerful, coped with shortages and rationing better than most and although she seldom got up toArmagh to see her family, she drew such comfort from knowing that they were there, that they were safe and that she was no longer thousands of miles away.
Disasters it seemed, always struck unexpectedly. One night when Jimmy was cycling to work he was caught by a sudden raid. Before he could find an air-raid shelter, he was knocked out by a lump of flying wood. Lying in the road, lit only by the flickers from burning buildings, a fire engine just managed to avoid his unconscious body at the last minute. That night he escaped death and suffered only a bad headache the next day. He was not so
Finally, they decided they would return home. They arrived back in Belfast in August 1939. A month later they opened the newspaper to find that the ship on which they had travelled back had been torpedoed as it made the return journey to Canada.
There was no problem with Jimmy finding work. As a skilled mechanic he was taken on at Shorts immediately. Within days he was assembling parts of the fuselage of the Sunderland flying boats which were to patrol the western approaches.Finding a house was another matter. Houses were in very short supply in the city and Polly found that living with her McGillvray in-laws was even worse than being homesick. Davy and Eddie were resentful and unsettled and complained continually about the absence of candy and ice-cream parlours. They compared everything in Belfast with what they had left behind in Canada and hadn’t a good word to say for anything.
When the Blitz began it was poor Ronnie who was terrified. Always the quietest and most thoughtful of the three, he became anxious when the first barrage balloons appeared in the sky. Although Polly tried to explain they were there to protect them, Ronnie was oppressed by the great, grey shapes and remained even more anxious about them than about the planes that were soon making raids on the docks, shipyards and aircraft factories.
Night after night Polly lay awake listening, for when Jimmy worked a double shift, he would be at work when the raiders came. She learnt, as everyone in Britain learnt, to fear moonlight, those beautiful clear nights when the raiders could find their targets more easily. But the worst night of all, the one that would remain forever in the minds of those who lived through it, Jimmy was at home, asleep by her side in the new house they had finally acquired.
In the morning they smelt the smoke and the taint of rubber in the air. When they listened to the radio at six o’clock, before the boys were awake and heard the toll of dead and missing, they kissed each other and shed a few tears. Hours later the phone rang and a neighbour of Jimmy’s parents told him that his brother was missing. The police had called on his father and suggested that someone should go down to St George’s Market to see if he was there. That was where the bodies were being laid out for identification.
Jimmy had found his brother’s body, undamaged and unmarked, a victim of blast. By a strange chance he lay beside three of his old school friends whose battered remains had been dug from the rubble of the back-to-back houses down by the docks where Jimmy and his brother had begun their lives. He was looking down at them unable to grasp how four of the five wee lads who kicked a tin can round the street together, should be together once again, when the mother of one of them appeared, bent over and leaning on a stick. Jimmy had stood and wept and the bereaved mother had comforted him.
Although she worried about her family, the war years were not as hard on Polly as they were on many other women. She was practical and cheerful, coped with shortages and rationing better than most and although she seldom got up toArmagh to see her family, she drew such comfort from knowing that they were there, that they were safe and that she was no longer thousands of miles away.
Disasters it seemed, always struck unexpectedly. One night when Jimmy was cycling to work he was caught by a sudden raid. Before he could find an air-raid shelter, he was knocked out by a lump of flying wood. Lying in the road, lit only by the flickers from burning buildings, a fire engine just managed to avoid his unconscious body at the last minute. That night he escaped death and suffered only a bad headache the next day. He was not so
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