Roamer: Second World War through the eyes of a six-year-old boy

Born in January 1939 and brought up in Greenisland, Christopher Wilson says he was “eight months a pre-war baby.” The rest of today’s page is Christopher’s.

The presence of war was seen in many ways in Greenisland.

The site of today’s University of Ulster was a Prisoner of War (PoW) camp.

In what is now Belfast High School’s playing fields there was an underground radio control centre.

Long trains of open waggons carrying new tanks chugged through Greenisland Station en route from manufacture in Belfast to Larne Harbour for embarkation to England. Convoys of military vehicles led by Military Police jeeps passed along the A2 road and being on RAF Aldergrove’s flight path we saw many planes flying over our home.

Life for me and my pals was both ordinary and not ordinary. We spent many happy hours on the Greenisland beach swimming, exploring rock pools and catching crabs.

We were often soaked - not by swimming - but by RAF Sunderland sea planes taking off from the lough at Shorts’ aircraft factory. Showers of sea water cascaded from their floats!

Dusk brought a countrywide blackout which meant no streetlights; all windows and doors covered by black curtain material and ARP (Air Raid Precaution) civilian patrols making sure the law was observed.

Everyone - pedestrians and motorists - had to be extremely careful on roads. All vehicles, including horse drawn ones, had very dim, shaded lights.

Travelling on buses and Belfast trams meant sitting in the dark. Conductors had a small lamp, without a bulb reflector, attached to their ticket machine strap and weren’t permitted to call out stop names in case a German spy was on board! All road, street and railway station signs were removed.

Rationing brought ration books to every household and motorists were issued with petrol coupons. Food and clothing were the main items rationed.

Tea, sugar and cigarettes were always scarce and a ‘black market’ was soon operational offering hugely overpriced illegal goods!

The border with the Irish Republic, or Eiré, became a smugglers’ haven.

Eiré was neutral, with plentiful supplies, and because of its numerous small farms it was well-stocked with dairy and meat products which were rationed north of the border.

Trains and motor vehicles travelling into Northern Ireland were stopped at the border for customs checks.

Crafty ploys for evading goods seizures were developed, often recalled on Roamer’s pages!

One issue caused some confusion in border areas - the time!

The UK and Northern Ireland had double summertime - GMT+2 hours.

Eiré advanced clocks only one hour so people could leave an Ulster border town and arrive in an Eiré border town before having left Northern Ireland, according to their watches!

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought an end to war the world entered the age of the atomic bomb - destruction on a massive, unprecedented scale.

Some aspects of life returned to normal - the blackout ended and street and all other lighting restrictions disappeared though rationing continued until the early 1950s.

From newspapers and the wireless we learned about world affairs - the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, the Communist uprising in Malaya and Communist takeover in China and the Korean war.

The main change was the Iron Curtain that ‘descended across the continent’ (Churchill’s terminology) which brought in the Cold War and NATO.

The one relief for us was a wedding celebration in 1947.

We forgot the shortages and enjoyed festivities for Princess Elizabeth’s marriage to Prince Philip.

And what was the 1939 baby, who grew up in this period of war and so-called peace, doing in the 1950s?

In 1953 he was in a stand in the Mall in London watching the Coronation processions for HM Queen Elizabeth.

In September 1956, as the Suez crisis developed, he entered Stranmillis Teacher Training College (Stran) and after 39 years teaching pupils with special educational needs he retired in 1999.