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The Belfast Blitz
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| Culzie | Date: Monday, 2013-10-07, 8:41 PM | Message # 31 |
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| A lot of kids were evacuated to the countryside because of the attacks on Belfast by the Luftwaffe. Just read in the NL about one of these kids.. The Roamer Oct 4 2012
Belfast girl Renee McAllister (nee Leslie), now living in Donaghadee, attended Letterbreen School near Kesh in Fermanagh with her five brothers and sisters in the 1940s, after being evacuated there with their mother from a city suffering the horrors of the German Blitz.
One tragic scene on the platform, as the city children clambered apprehensively towards their new life in an unfamiliar countryside,remains enormously poignant in Renee's memories.
'' One man was going on to Ederney, with a wee parcel, which contained his little girl's boot. He told my mother it was all he found of his wife and two daughters...when their house took a direct hit''
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| RSAUB | Date: Wednesday, 2013-10-09, 5:37 PM | Message # 32 |
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Colonel general
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| Sad story indeed, a terrible time in the history of our City. Always grew up hearing from my great grandmother of the Percy street air raid shelter disaster.A tragic and terrible waste of life.
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| Culzie | Date: Wednesday, 2013-10-09, 10:21 PM | Message # 33 |
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| Percy Street Shankill Road and Blythe Street Sandy Row were both hit. They were terrible times and both Protestant and Catholics died,but still the ira didn't give a damm and were still killing and maiming as the war went on. They guided the German bombers in too.. The people had suffered enough but all they could do was add to their suffering. As for Eire .....
From The Cruel Sea
Irish neutrality,on which she placed a generous interpretation, permitted the Germans to maintain in Dublin an espionage centre, a window into Britain,which operated thoughout the war and did incalculable harm to the Allied cause. But from the naval point of view there was an even more deadly factor; this was the loss of the naval bases in southern and western Ireland,which had been available to the Royal Navy during the first world war but were now forbidden them. To compute how many men and how many ships this denial was costing, month after month, was hardly possible; but the total was substantial and tragic. From these bases escorts could have sailed further out into the Atlantic, and provided additional cover for the hard-pressed convoys; from these bases, destroyers and corvettes could have refuelled quickly, and tugs sent out to ships in distress, from these bases: the Battle of the Atlantic might have been fought on something like equal terms.
As it was,the bases were denied,escorts had to go 'the long way round' to get to the battlefield, and return to harbour at least two days earlier than would have been necessary: the cost in men and ships, added months to the struggle, and ran up a score which Irish eyes smiling on the day of Allied victory were not going to cancel.
From a narrow legal angle, Ireland was within her rights; she had opted for neutrality, and the rest of the story flowed from this decision, She was in fact at liberty to stand aside from the struggle, whatever harm this did to the Allied cause. But sailors watching the ships go down and counting the number of their friends who might have been alive instead of dead, saw the thing in simpler terms. They saw Ireland safe under the British umbrella, fed by her convoys and protected by her air force, her very neutrality guaranteed by the British armed forces: they saw no return for this protection save a condoned sabotage of the Allied war effort; and they were angry - permanently angry. As they sailed past this smug coastline, past people who did not give a damn how the war went as long as long as they could live in their fairy-tale world, they had time to ponder a new aspect of indecency. In the list of people you were prepared to like when the war was over, the man who stood by and watched while you were getting your throat cut could not figure very high.
Re the Irish eyes smiling. That wasn't exactly the case. There were reports in the newspapers of the day which told of attacks on some students from Trinity College Dublin who had rejoiced at the Allies victory, and in Newry a woman who had put out a Union flag had her house attacked.
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| Culzie | Date: Thursday, 2013-10-10, 10:35 PM | Message # 34 |
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C:\Users\rab\Pictures\Newspaper5b0001_adjusted.jpg
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| RSAUB | Date: Friday, 2013-10-11, 6:43 AM | Message # 35 |
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| Great articles, little pieces of history that we must never let be forgotten.
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| Culzie | Date: Friday, 2013-10-11, 3:22 PM | Message # 36 |
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| Eric Waugh one time BBC announcer/news reader had an article in the BT which told of the IRA on Divis mountain signalling in the German bombers. No thought at all given to the people of Belfast both Protestant. and Roman Catholic. 900 died in one night. But hey that doesn't matter when its done in the name of oul Oireland
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| RSAUB | Date: Friday, 2013-10-11, 6:45 PM | Message # 37 |
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| They are scum of the highest order, nothing whatsoever surprises me about them any more.
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