Letter: ​My happy boyhood memories in Belfast during a war that we were too young to understand

I was born in January 1938. My first memory is at the age of three, being carried out in my father's arms into his air raid shelter in the garage, which was made of metal. My late brother George, four years older, opened the garage door and there were people there, with mattresses in it. There was a hell of a lot of noise outside.

We lived on the Ballysillan Road in north Belfast, which was badly hit in the 1941 raids. I don't actually remember the damage being caused but I knew of it.

Another memory is of people walking up the road: we were near the city limits, and could see people who were getting as far out from the centre of the city as they could.

I also remember static water tanks, four or five feet off the ground,/ used by the fire brigade to put out fires. Sadly there were children who were drowned in them.

We had a neighbour in the home guard. I got from him a piece of wood shaped like a rifle, with which he paraded. I am not sure if he had a real rifle. My older relatives had served in the first world war, not the second.

Another memory is of the run-up to D-Day in 1944, when I was aged six. I recall the American aircraft coming in and being driven by lorry towards Aldergove or perhaps to the US airstrip at Langford Lodge.

My parents might well have been worried about the war, but while I knew there was a war I was too young to appreciate what was really going on: I was 18 months old when the war began and coming up to 8 when the atomic bomb ended the war in August 1945.

I remember them listening to the news on BBC radio, and I have a memory of a famous presenter called Alvar Lidell saying: "This is the 9 o clock news read at dictation speed."

I was aged seven during VE Day, and I didn't know the significance. But these are happy memories: there was bunting up everywhere on the houses and it was celebrated because the war was over.

I suppose people had known the war was coming to an end, People were delighted that the fighting in Europe was now over.

We got a day off school the year after, the first anniversary, and that was it! I hoped we would have a day off every year!

In the aftermath of the war, High Street in Belfast was pretty devastated. I was at the Boy's model school. A church on the Cliftonville Road, near the football ground, was hit an replaced.

The first time I ever saw a banana was in the glass house at botanic gardens. Food like that was not being imported.

It all seems so long ago. My father died in November 1969 aged 73, my mother aged 70 in June 1970, as the Troubles and fresh tragedy was getting under way.

I do not have room in this letter about a New Zealand man I met whose brother was killed flying into Slieve Donard but hope to explain that soon. In Moira yesterday we were remembering the 26 NZ servicemen who died in Northern Ireland.

Bryan Johnston, Former banker, Belfast BT9