My
Most Memorable Easter - Ruth McCart
Easter
Tuesday 1941, school was closed for the Easter
holiday and we children were free to
play all day at the various street games which
were so popular at
that time. No one I knew went away for holidays at Easter and especially
not now when war was raging throughout Europe.
I had played during the afternoon
with Fred Graham who lived in the next street. We used a bat and peg, which
had been crudely fashioned from pieces of wood.
The game was called Piggy and Stick.
People who are younger than I am may never have heard of this game so I will
explain how it was played. The Piggy was a small piece of wood sharpened
at both ends, while the bat was rather like
a baseball bat. The piggy was placed on the
ground and the sharpened end was hit with the bat. When it jumped, the player
then had to hit it and send it as far away from base as possible. The score
was
counted on how many lengths of the bat the piggy was from base. Fred and
I were well into our game when I disagreed
with his counting and accused him of cheating.
We had a row and vowed never to play with each other again. We couldn't possibly
have known how prophetic that vow was to be.
I
have no recollection of the rest of that day. It
must have been as uneventful as any other day. Suddenly
in my memory it is the middle of the night. I am
wakened
by a cacophony of sounds. The air raid siren wailing, the steady drone of aircraft
and the relentless thunder of heavy gunfire. Above
all this noise my mother is screaming at us children
to hurry and get dressed. In the midst of the panic
and fear and in total darkness I manage to take off my nightdress, but I cannot
find my clothes. I hear a long, high-pitched whistling sound which grows louder
and louder and then the most tremendous explosion. The windows smash, the ceilings
fall, my chest hurts, I cannot breathe, my mouth, nose and eyes are full of
dirt
and grit and I am still naked.
 Then
we are all crying and calling out to each other and
trying to scramble our way out of the rubble that
had been our home.
The street is carpeted with broken glass, rubble, and broken furniture. The
skeletons of our homes are silhouetted against
the night sky, which is lit by searchlights,
exploding shells, moonlight and burning buildings. There is a river of fire
flowing along the street.
Could
this be the Hell that is talked about in Sunday school?
(I was told many years later that it was the spirits from the local bar,
which were burning.) Everywhere I look there are
people screaming and calling the
names of those they cannot find. They look like
Negro minstrels with their soot-blackened
faces. Someone gives me a pair of boy's boots and a jacket they have found
amidst the rubble. What a relief, I am no longer naked.
In confusion and terror, everyone who could, crowded into the local school, which,
although now without windows and doors, offered the protection of walls and a
roof. The rest of that terrible night was spent cowering under a school desk,
listening to the screeching whistles of the bombs as they rained down. I remember
being given an elastic band and being told if I kept chewing it my mouth would
not be so dry.
Eventually the noise lessened, the planes left, the guns ceased their roaring
and morning came. I emerged into a totally changed world. Everything familiar
was gone. There was a pall of smoke rising from the still burning buildings,
motes of soot and dust danced in the morning sunlight.
The
huge balloons which were in some obscure way supposed
to protect us from air attack were now in tatters,
shining and glinting in large silver swathes from the overhead lines
like some
grotesque decoration. Everyone seemed to be looking for missing relatives
including my mother who eventually found my four
year old brother whom someone had carried
to safety while she carried my baby sister.
My playmate Fred - and all his family - were dead.
I cannot remember how we, as a family, got to the
holding centre from whence we were evacuated to Newtownards
for a short time - nor do I remember how
we travelled to Portadown where we were to live with distant relatives
for one
glorious summer and autumn. It was there I discovered the delights of
living in "the country",
a magical place where milk, butter and eggs came from the farm, not the shop,
and apples came from the trees and not from a box. But that is another story. 
YOUR RESPONSES...
Frances Riice Oakes - July '08
We got dressed up as a may Queen and sang our Queenie can burl her leg, Can burl her leg. Anyone tell me where it comes from please?
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