Yellow rose won the Texas war and other readers’ tales

Those are just a few headlines from readers’ stories shared on this page during 2023 (sent to Roamer’s email and postal address shown below).

Those stories would have been revisited at the end of the year in the annual New Year look-back, but as the page had temporarily departed, they’re here today.

Better late than never!

The jelly babies starred in a whimsical poem by Ballymacarrett joiner Fred Nugent; author of Zorba the Greek, Nikos Kazantzakis, fell in love with Kathleen Forde in Iraklion (Crete) in 1902 - she was the rector’s daughter from Kilcronaghan, Draperstown, and the gateposts made of old Mark VIII 21-inch torpedoes were spotted in County Antrim.

But last year began with little William’s story.

Born in 1921 in Leitrim, near Dromara, William milked cows on the family farm and walked barefoot to the village school.

Known as Mac when he joined the RAF at the start of WWII William Alexander McIlroy was promoted to Flight Lieutenant by the time war ended.

His son Simon, author of a gripping book about his dad ominously entitled POW 3267, told us about Mac’s numerous bombing raids over Germany, and his six crash landings!

In April 1943 Mac took part in a massive raid on Stuttgart, the rear gunner in a Halifax bomber which was attacked by a night fighter over France.

Badly injured, Mac parachuted out of the ferociously burning plane, spent two years in a German POW camp with over 100 pieces of shrapnel in his leg and returned home to fly VIPs, statesmen and celebrities around the UK and Europe.

Amongst other wartime accounts shared here by readers last year was Harland and Wolff’s 8,000-ton cargo ship MV Roxburgh Castle, the first of only five surviving ships (of dozens) into port from Operation Pedestal - the greatly diminished, battle-weary but successful Malta Convoy.

In a story rarely told, the plucky Belfast-built vessel entered Malta’s deep-water harbour on 13 August 1942 to rapturous cheers from servicemen and locals on the quays.

Severely damaged by enemy air and sea attacks, Roxburgh Castle was barely afloat, with the exploded remnants of a German torpedo embedded in her shattered hull!

Another war was recounted last year by Ballycastle-born journalist Mitchell Smyth, former travel editor of the Toronto Star, retired in Canada.

He told us about Belfast-born artist Henry Arthur McArdle’s iconic painting of the Battle of San Jacinto, a mêlée ‘won’ by Emily Morgan, nicknamed the Yellow Rose of Texas.

The Mexican army’s General Santa Anna was ‘relaxing’ with Emily in his tent when the Texan army swooped in and routed the General’s leaderless troops!

Mitchell shared many stories here with links to Ireland, like Irish gangster Owen ‘Owney’ Madden (allegedly Mae West’s boyfriend) who ran organised crime in the U.S. before the Italian mafia took over, and Longford-born Frank Butler, husband and manager of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Immortalised in the film ‘Annie Get Your Gun’, Annie’s forte was shooting a cigarette out of the mouth of a ‘volunteer’ from the audience - usually Frank!

In 1889, appearing in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in Berlin, Frank arranged for Kaiser Wilhelm II to be Annie’s target.

She shot his cigarette in half and reportedly said later that if she’d missed it, WWI mightn’t have happened!

I’ve often hailed former-Roamer Louis Malcolm here, who recounted his tenure in a book entitled ‘Around and About - The Best of The Roamer’.

“Most of the stories and snippets of humour needed neither garnishing or varnishing before making print,” he wrote in the book’s introduction “day by day I simply passed them on to you as they were told to me.”

That’s still what Roamer’s page is all about, confirmed last year, Saturday by Saturday, with readers’ stories about ancient, invisible lines traversing our landscape, and bilingual whistle-Scot tours of Ulster, and rare ‘half-arm’ telegraph poles in County Wexford….and much, much more.

There was even an announcement here from the internationally renowned Gate Appreciation Society about Ulster’s favourite gates.

The one attached to torpedoes wasn’t mentioned!