Belfast Blitz remembered: Man remembers watching city burn and finding incendiary bomb in garden
A ninety year old man has recounted finding bringing a German incendiary bomb in his garden during the Belfast Blitz and presenting it to his mother.
George Clarke, who now lives in Coleraine, was speaking to the News Letter on the anniversary of the blitz of 1941, this week.
Drawn to the town by its industry and port, the Luftwaffe pummelled Belfast in four raids in one month which left almost one thousand people dead and crippled the strategically vital war industries.
"I remember the Blitz well," George said. "I was six or seven. I lived in north Belfast and we went up the mountain - Cave Hill - where we stayed the night.
"I remember it vividly, carrying a bottle of milk up the mountain.
"Thousands of people were making beds in the hedges and in the fields.
"There were hundreds of people all lined up on the mountain just watching.
"I remember looking down over Belfast and seeing the city burning. And then a crowd would starting roaring, because they heard another bomber coming."
The bomber circled over them looking for its target, with the crowds looking up and pointing at it.
"We stayed up there and watched and watched and waited and waited - for at least two nights."
Everyone brought blankets and big coats.
"People were really fearful - they thought the world was going to end."
He recalls finding an aluminium German incendiary bomb in his back garden.
"I can remember that it was a lovely white metal, shiny thing in the garden, I brought into the house and my mother screamed and there was a whole panic."
It was about 18 inches wide and about a quarter of an inch thick. A huge policeman arrived to assess it followed by air raid wardens in a van, who took it away.
He lived only 200 yards away from the Waterworks in north Belfast which was bombed, he says, because the Germans thought it was the harbour.
He also remembers a bomb landing near a playground at St Mary's Gardens.
"There was a big bomb crater at the top of the New Lodge Road and the smoke was still coming out of it. I remember all the firemen standing looking into it. It was about five yards wide and five yards deep."
Of the Blitz, he now says: "I think we were lucky in a way that it didn't last too long."