COUSIN, LOST AND FOUND

by AIDAN O'SHEA    © 2/8/2010 

My cousin never saw her father. Bernard died on September 15th, 1941, four months before she was born. A massive heart attack, the hallmark of the O'Shea males, felled him at the age of 39 years. He had been 18 years old in 1920 when the War of Independence erupted in Ireland. It was a conflict characterised by ambush and guerrilla stealth on the Irish side, and by curfew, repression, summary arrest and military trial by the governing British forces. Small wonder that Bernard, a printer by trade and an avid reader, was swept up in "The Boys". This affectionate title for The Irish Republican Army (IRA) conveys the covert support and protection then provided by the local nationalist population.

During martial law and curfew in Cork City in 1920-21, each household was obliged to post a list of family members on the inside of the front door. When raided by the police, or the dreaded paramilitary Black and Tans, Bernard's mother struggled to explain his absence, claiming overtime and night working as the reason. The truth was that Bernard was on the run, living hand to mouth in safe houses between acts of sabotage and violence against the forces of British law and order.

A truce with Britain in July 1921 was followed by a treaty establishing an Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). The treaty was approved by a majority in the provisional Irish parliament (Dáil) and by the people in a subsequent general election. But Bernard's rebel heart could not accept this half-way house to a republic, and he joined the resistance against the nascent state. This resistance dragged on into a bloody civil war lasting into the early months of 1923. Families, friends and IRA comrades were divided during that dark period.

History tells us that many of the republicans left Ireland after the amnesty ending the civil war, while others regrouped under De Valera to form the Fianna Fáil Party, which won a majority in the general election of 1932. Despite the passage of time and the politicisation of republican support, a small group of so-called diehard republicans vowed to resist the Free State and its partition from the six counties of Northern Ireland. This diehard group re-activated during World War Two (1939-45), in which The Irish Free State was neutral. Bernard went on the run yet again, despite being married with two daughters and another baby on the way. Many republicans were interned without trial by the Irish government to stifle any subversive contacts with Nazi Germany.  Then Bernard's fevered life of idealism, fanatical resistance and flight came to a sudden end in 1941.

So, as I have said, my cousin never saw her father, although she was named Bernadette in his honour.  Neither did I see her father, as I was born a few months after her. But I was thrilled in a childish way by his acts of daring and defiance. I failed to see the struggle that his widow Christine endured, raising three girls in the bleak years of the 1940s, trying to add to her meagre pension by doing housework for others. She died in November 1957, aged 54 years. Bernadette was 15 years old and it was then that I lost her. She went to live with her older sister who had qualified as a nurse in England. That entire branch of the family went to the very country whose imperial power their father had resisted.  A pall of distance and silence separated us.

Fast forward fifty years (1957-2007). Ann Cantwell, a client in my pharmacy at Blackpoool, casually mentioned that she might be related to me through marriage. Her late aunt Christine was married to Bernard O'Shea. Not only that, but my lost cousin Bernadette was writing regularly to Ann from Harvey Bay, Queensland, Australia.  Two email addresses and a couple of clicks of a mouse later, we were in touch!

Bernadette's story unfolded like this. Having left school at 15 without a certificate, she left Ireland at 16, worked in unskilled jobs around Portsmouth, and then joined The Royal Air Force!  Did she hesitate over her oath of loyalty to the Crown? This experience gave her discipline, training and the ambition to progress. She trained as a nurse, married a policeman and they subsequently divorced. At the age of 37, she took an assisted passage to Australia, under a scheme to encourage immigrants from the mother country (UK). She worked in hospitals in Sydney, progressing to the rank of a theatre nurse, and then joined the nursing corps of The Australian Army. There she met Bob Ney, a veteran of the Vietnam War, and they married. They had no children, and now work voluntarily for the many widows and injured veterans of the Vietnam campaign, and laterally of the Afghanistan campaign.

Bernadette and Bob recently spent a week in Cork meeting the lost cousins of her youth, chatting in her lilting Cork accent about her early life in Dillon's Cross and school at South Pres convent.  She was full of enthusiasm for the extended family.   Cork bore her but Britain and Australia made her. She was very pleased to learn that my son is named Cormac Bernard O'Shea, and that he lives in Sydney, Australia.

Tea Mining

    by Victor Sullivan   © 2013

A tale of thrift and theft during World War 2

In a dull, gloomy, Irish town in the late 1930s. one of the general grocery shops was run by a clever, business-like widow with the help of her three children, two girls in their late teens and their fourteen-year-old brother, Danny. The family lived above the shop. With the war-clouds looming ever darker over late 1930s Europe, stories of impending hardship proliferated and those with appropriate wisdom took equally appropriate steps to mitigate whatever disasters might lie ahead. Some commodities would become scarce, she reasoned, difficult to source, better still if they became unobtainable, especially if she had the only source of such a commodity hidden securely....... It would have to have a long shelf-life, value would increase over time. Patience would be rewarded ten-fold or more!  Danny watched his mother's precautionary measures develop with interest and wondered of the anticipated profits might lead to an increase in the pitifully small weekly allowance he and his sisters received from the family business.

Doomed Flight 182 and Us   

An anxious morning at an airport remembered.

© 22 June 2011     by Victor Sullivan    

I have never had a problem with early morning rising. I enjoy driving along almost empty roads, beating the rush hour traffic while listening to the business chat-shows and news reports on the car radio. On the morning of 23rd June, 1985, I was on the road to Shannon Airport, accompanied by my wife, to meet our daughter who was returning on an early morning flight from a visit to America. It was a beautifully clear morning and the Irish countryside through we drove was lush and green. A few miles ahead a 747 rose majestically from the scenery and climbed into the clear blue sky. We were almost at the Airport and with thirty minutes to spare before Carol's scheduled arrival there would be ample time to relax with a cup of coffee. 

Hopefully she would arrive on time and we could head for home without delay.

The radio chat-show was unexpectedly interrupted by a newsflash, something about an aircraft  missing over the Atlantic. We drove into Shannon Airport's precincts, then, as we entered the car parking area the morning chat-show was again interrupted by the News-room:

'A commercial aircraft is reported to have disappeared from the radar screens without warning while over the Atlantic...'

Suddenly the situation hit us, hard. Our only daughter was in a commercial aircraft somewhere over the Atlantic!

Of course we did not believe that the impossible might have happened. That sort of thing doesn't happen to people like us, does it? Where can we get...?  Where...? Think! Arrivals; YES. There must be a list of any planes delayed.  We have no memory of the tedious matter of parking, locking the car doors or locating an Arrivals Display. What was Carol's Flight Number? Neither of us could remember. All the flights due within the next hour or two appeared to be on time. None delayed. But when was this list last updated? A 747 touched down outside and we waited anxiously for the Arrivals board to change. It did. Still no delays. The next one should be Carol's plane. We stood, holding sweaty hands, staring at the spot in the sky where we expected to see the approaching aircraft appear.  The scheduled arrival time passed according to my watch. Our hands gripped more tightly. One entire, very long minute late already! 'Here it comes!' It touches down gently and taxis towards the Terminal building. Time to join the welcoming gang outside the Customs Hall.  

'Carol!'  Hugs! Kisses! 'Mum!' 'Dad!' Tears, 'What's the matter? I've only been away for two weeks?' 

'Tell you in the car.'

Baggage trolley to car-park, forgot about coffee, barrier up and we are away on the open road towards home, rushing to get away from something unthinkable that hadn't happened to us. 

The car radio frequently interrupted its scheduled programmes and we were kept well informed about the unfolding horror story. It came as no surprise to find helicopters thundering overhead on arriving at our home in Cork. The aircraft that had vanished from the radar screens without warning at 07:14 GMT when approximately 100 miles off the south west coast of Ireland, was an Air India passenger aircraft, Flight No.182, en route from Canada to India. A terrorist bomb had blasted it apart in mid air at 31,000 feet, killing every one of the 329 people on board while we were driving through the peaceful, green Irish countryside from our home in Cork towards Shannon Airport. Our daughter had been in another east-bound aircraft, a few hundred miles away, at the fatal moment.

A huge Search and Recovery operation involving ships and aircraft located many bodies and body-parts and  transferred them to the Cork Regional Hospital, (now Cork University Hospital), where a team of doctors and nurses successfully identified the recovered victims and sent their coffins to their families in India, Canada and America. Sixty victims were children under the age of 10.

But many bodies were never recovered, a matter of great concern and distress to their relatives. Frank Donaldson, a friend of the author, proposed that an appropriate Monument should be erected as near as practical to the spot in the ocean where Fight 182 was destroyed. He identified a suitable location at Ahakista, near the village of Durrus, on the edge of Dunmanus Bay. The monument suggestion received unanimous support and sculptor Ken Thompson created a huge sundial, cleverly aligned so that the sun annually indicates the precise moment of the explosion in the baggage-hold of the doomed aircraft. 

The unveiling of the Sundial was carried out in complete secrecy at the request of the families of the victims.The news media were successfully outwitted. Many family members from India, Canada and elsewhere congregated at this unique monument and conducted a solemn unveiling ceremony that included the placing of wreaths on the sea. Appropriately on that moving occasion wind and tide combined to take the many wreaths out into Dunmanus Bay and westwards towards the spot in the Atlantic Ocean where Flight 182 ended. 

© Victor Sullivan

A Memorial Ceremony takes place annually at the Sundial on 23rd June.

A magnificient example of Indian artwork was presented to the Hospital, a token of gratitude for not only the grim work but also for the comfort and support given to the grieving relatives.

'Tell the Pilot to Turn Back' by Victor Sullivan

Panic on a passenger aircraft.

© July 2011

The Aer Lingus Viscount turboprop flew steadily westward, its throttled back engines whining less urgently as we made our gradual descent towards Cork airport on a beautiful, clear, summer evening in the 1970s. Flying a mile or two off the coast, I was enjoying the view of Ireland's lush green fields and southern coastline from my window seat. I love flying. I enjoy trying to identify places and objects far below. I particularly enjoy looking for traces of archaeological sites that become clearer when illuminated by the late evening sun, faint circles in fields, some cut through by roads and lanes, questionable patterns, man-made? Perhaps.

I tried to ignore the man beside me who seemed determined to engage me in conversation about the horror headlines and photographs in his London evening paper. I knew it recounted violence, bombings, internment and murder in Northern Ireland, ugly demonstrations in Dublin and elsewhere in the country. The headlines about Northern Ireland's Troubles were nearly always like that in those days. I was enjoying  the flight and was not in the mood for such discussion.

We passed the popular seaside town of Youghal with its long beach and caravan parks. Smoke from a few fires drifted vertically upwards before spreading horizontally; a very calm evening. Then, as the famous Midleton Distillery appeared, the stewardess issued the pre-landing instructions and commenced her inspection tour down the centre aisle, checking that our safety belts were fastened. 

As the eastern suburbs of the city of Cork came into view a ripple of anxiety seemed to spread along the seats on my side of the aircraft. I heard the word 'smoke' gasped several times. Some seat-belts were again released along the opposite side of the aisle as the occupants crossed to my side and, stooping low to peer out at the the cause of the sudden anxiety.

'Please return to your seats and fasten your safety belts immediately!' shouted the stewardess. 

'But the smoke! All that smoke!' someone shouted back.

The stewardess was about to lean across me for a look through my window when a woman passenger began to scream, 'Don't land! Don't land! Tell the pilot to turn back! Tell him now! Please don't land!'

The stewardess vanished rapidly in the direction of the cockpit. I heard the undercarriage go down. Through the elliptical window numerous columns of dense smoke could be seen rising vertically into the clear calm sky from every area of Cork city. Angry, orange-yellow flames flickered at the base of most of the black, writhing pillars. 

The public address system crackled and a man cleared his throat.

'This is your captain speaking. We are making our final approach to Cork Airport.  Welcome to Cork on this, the 23rd of June, St. John's night. Tonight is bonfire night all over Ireland.'

Grinning sheepishly, the red-faced stewardess emerged from the cockpit, sat on her seat and continued to grin as she secured her own belt mere seconds before the wheels touched the concrete of runway 35. 

Was I worried on seeing the pillars of smoke? Not in the slightest. 

I was returning to my home in Cork city from a one-day business trip. For at least a week previously boys from 8 to 18 had been dragging wooden pallets, old car tyres, odd planks and discarded (?) furniture past our gate. 'Anything for our bonfire, Sir?'

Two days before my visit to London one of our fine trees had been roughly deprived of a few substantial lower branches by persons unknown. I had also been obliged to systematically excavate and rescue various personal items of some value from the growing combustible pile that had materialised in a corner of the garden. No doubt our own three young pyromaniacs would be awaiting my homecoming impatiently. It would be my paternal duty to perform the formal ignition ceremony and send another column of smoke skywards in honour of St. John and add to the terror of yet more unenlightened incoming airline passengers.

My Clerical Career

By Aidan O’Shea © 2011

The convent of Marie Reparatrice in Cork was home to a community of prayer from 1885 to 1987. The sisters of the community led an enclosed and virtually silent life defined by daily adoration of the Eucharist. Those who visited the convent chapel at any hour would see two sisters kneeling in silent prayer before the monstrance in a recess high within a gothic altarpiece. The only sound was the ticking of a clock under which was a brass plate quoting Christ’s reproach to his sleeping disciples in Gethsemane:  “Could you not watch one hour with me?”

It was my privilege to be an altar boy or acolyte there for six years. I learned later that an acolyte is just the first of the holy orders of clerical life. Acolyte recruits were the responsibility of Mother Dunstan, a lady seemingly ageless, since her elaborate blue and white habit covered all but her pale face and bright eyes. My first encounter with her was the fitting. Each of us was measured for a handmade soutane in scarlet with matching hand-made scarlet slippers. Over the soutane, a starched linen surplice was fitted from stock. Each surplice had beautifully embroidered cuffs and hems featuring sacred symbols in fine detail. I recall clusters of grapes, the Greek capital letters Alpha and Omega, and stylised crosses radiating beams of grace. We had especially ornate surplices for the high feasts of Easter and Christmas. Mother Dunstan took a justifiable pride in our gradual transformation from scuffed schoolboys to little scarlet and white soldiers of Christ. As our training progressed, we did not walk or shuffle, we processed. Our handmade slippers allowed us to glide silently over the perfectly polished sanctuary floor.

Next came the recital of Latin responses. Not for us the garbled prayer of “Blessed art thou a monk swimming”.  We mastered “Benedicta tu in mulieribus” which added depth and mystery to the words. “Pleni sunt coeli et terra Gloria tua” still carries a resonance not matched by “Heaven and earth are full of your glory”. Progressing from the spoken word to song, we added our boy soprano notes to the “Tantum ergo” at evening benediction.

 The tools of the acolyte’s trade had to be mastered one by one and used with solemnity and pride. Firstly there was the brass gong with its padded mallet. Strike too softly and the congregation beyond the wrought iron sanctuary screen would not hear. Strike too loudly and the whole chapel would vibrate for half a minute. The cut glass cruets of water and wine, the finger bowl and linen hand towel were further points of promotion for the novice acolyte. As we grew in confidence and in height, so we progressed.

The heavy Latin missal on its brass stand called for a taller boy who moved it from right to left of the altar for the gospel reading and back again afterwards. Remember to genuflect on the right knee when crossing the centre line of the tabernacle. Genuflect on both knees and bow the head momentarily when the Eucharist is exposed in the monstrance.

The summit of the acolyte’s skills, my Everest so to speak, was the thurible, so important that its bearer carried the additional title of thurifer. The base of the thurible was firstly loaded with a slab of heated charcoal. This charcoal was kept hot by gently swinging the thurible from side to side. At the appropriate time, incense, a fragrant crystalline gum, was sprinkled over the charcoal, causing a dense cloud of resinous smoke to rise. We had learned that incense was one of the three gifts brought by the kings to the infant Jesus. A skilled thurifer was allowed to salute the celebrant and the congregation with incense. Raise the vessel, swing it once from its foreshortened chain, then two more swings and bow. Practice made perfect, but some overenthusiastic thurifers created enough holy smoke to trigger asthma attacks! For such excesses, demotion to gong striker could result.

My clerical career came to an end in my thirteenth year. My singing voice had broken. A light stubble crept across my upper lip. My heart raced when a pretty girl passed by. Something told me that poverty, chastity and obedience were not for me, and that acolyte was to be the sum total of my holy orders. Even so, thanks to Mother Dunstan, I still cherish these words from Psalm 26:8:

“DOMINE, DILEXI DECOREM DOMUS TUAE, ET LOCUM HABITATIONIS GLORIAE TUAE.”

“O Lord, I have loved the beauty of thy house, and the place where thy glory dwells.”

Trooper Pat Mullins by Gerry Mulcaire

   © 2012

The Armoured Car in which Mullins was Killed

It's sad to think it's half a century

Since you were taken down by a mercenary.

Few youths today know of how you died

Fighting bravely, your dying comrade at your side.

Out-numbered and out-gunned

There still, your remains unfound.

In a place called Katanga, in the Congo

Far from Kilbeheny, where you are still a hero.

At only eighteen they sent you overseas

In a wool uniform only fit for the Galtees.

Now more will know when they read this poem

Of the bravery of an Irish blue-beret, who never came home.

L to R: Tpr. Jerry Lewellyn, Cpl Michael Nolan and Tpr Pat Mulllins pose with local children-Congo 1961

Now after fifty years a visit may be planned

To erect a plaque where you made your last stand.

Then the Katangans will know

The story of our Irish hero.

Who Knows, a ceremony may trigger memories

They may even tell us where your body lies.

So your broken-hearted family can bring you back home

To the foot-hills of the Galtees, where as a youth you did roam.

The tragedy is, the war rages still

Millions have died, and more will.

As long as the minerals last

Innocent lives will be lost.

So I dedicate these sad lines

To the memory of, "Trooper Pat Mullins".

            Rest in Peace.

Monument in memory of Tpr Pat Mullins in Kilbehenny.

William Cosgrove VC by Aidan O'Shea

A forgotten Irish Hero.

© 2011

The coast of East Cork has a modest charm of its own. Rostellan, Farsid, Whitegate and Roche’s Point lead on to Guileen and Inch bay.   This is the area where we spent seventeen summers, staying in former coastguard houses at Poer Head. That name (from the Norman-French de la Poer) tells us that this is fertile tillage land of large estates and relatively poor Irish tenants. 

I heard that a local man had been a First World War hero, and I set out in search of his story. William Cosgrove was born on October 1st 1888 at Ballinookera, near the little fishing village of Aghada. He was one of five sons to farmer Michael Cosgrove and Mary Morrissey. A daughter, Mary Catherine, died aged thirteen from tuberculosis. Life was harsh for the Cosgrove family, and Cosgrove’s father journeyed to Australia to seek work.

Mary Cosgrove and her six small children moved to a cottage in nearby Peafield. William attended the local school at Ballinrostig where his academic career was undistinguished. As soon as he was old enough, he left to become an apprentice butcher in Whitegate, a neighbouring village on the edge of Cork Harbour. He regularly delivered meat to Fort Carlisle army camp. The military establishments around Cork harbour were an important part of the local economy, drawing supplies and personnel from the immediate area. 

As the years passed, William’s thoughts turned increasingly towards the Army as a career, and in March 1909 he enlisted in the 1st battalion, Royal Munster Fusiliers and was assigned regimental number 8980.  The Munsters had developed from the private army of The East India Company, which explains why their cap badge featured a Royal Bengal tiger. Life in the army for William up to 1914 would appear to have been very mundane, but the declaration of war in August, 1914 drastically changed all that. At the outbreak of war, the 1st Battalion of the Munsters was stationed in Rangoon, Burma. They left Rangoon on the 21st of November, 1914 and landed in England on January 10th, 1915, still in their Indian issue uniforms. They stood on the quays shivering in their khaki drill shorts. The battalion was then assigned to the 86th Brigade of the 29th Division, in preparation for the landings at the Dardanelles. This was a narrow strait in North-eastern Turkey, joining the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara.

The 1st Munsters together with the 1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers and Hampshire Regiment were on the converted collier ‘River Clyde’ when it ran gently ashore at ‘V’ beach on the 25th of April 1915 at 6.20am. On departing from the ship the 2000 British troops were subject to the most ferocious enfilading machine gun fire from the Turks. Some of the Battalion’s finest men fell at this stage of the battle; those who managed to get ashore could not advance due to this withering Turkish fire. On the following day it was decided to destroy the wire entanglements that the naval bombardment had failed to do. It was during this attack that Cpl Cosgrove performed the action that was to earn him the regiment’s first Victoria Cross of the war. The action is best described by Cosgrove himself.

Our job was to dash ahead, face the trenches, bristling with rifle and machine guns and destroy the wire entanglements. Fifty men were entailed for the work, poor Sergeant-Major Bennett led us, but was killed, a bullet through the brain. I then took charge, shouted to the boys to come on, from the village near at hand came terrible fire to swell the murderous hail of bullets from the trenches. Some of us got close to the wire and we started to cut it with a pliers, you might as well try and snip Cloyne round tower with a scissors.” He then grabbed hold of the stakes holding the barbed wire, “I dashed at the first one, heaved and strained and it came into my arms … I believe there was wild cheering when they saw what I was at, but I only heard the screech of bullets and saw dirt rising all round from where they hit. I could not tell you how many I pulled up. I did my best and the boys around me were every bit as good as myself.

He was also wounded during this action and was promoted to Sergeant and saw no further action due to his wounds. The award of the V.C. was gazetted on August 23rd, 1915, stating “For most conspicuous bravery leading this section with great dash during our attack from the beach to the east of Cape Helles on the Turkish positions on April 26th, 1915. Cpl Cosgrove on this occasion pulled down the posts of the enemy’s high wire entanglements single-handed, notwithstanding a terrible fire from both front and flank, thereby greatly contributing to the successful clearing of the heights.” 

A popular ballad celebrates the bravery of the Munsters, who lost 4267 men in World War One. 

The Kaiser knows the Munsters

By the Shamrock on their caps,

 And the famous Bengal Tiger, ever ready for a scrap,

 And all his big battalions, Prussian Guards and grenadiers,

 Fear to face the flashing bayonets of the Munster Fusiliers.

Cosgrove transferred to the Royal Fusiliers in 1918 to the Leinster Regiment in 1920, the Northumberland Fusiliers in 1922 and later went as an Instructor to the Indian Territorial Force in 1928 to become 7042223 Staff Sgt Instructor. These regimental changes came about following the disbandment of Irish regiments in July 1922, because of the establishment of The Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). He came home in 1935 pending discharge to pension; unfortunately his plans were all to go wrong. He was admitted to Millbank hospital, but took discharge before he was fit. After a short leave in Cork, he returned to London, where he was admitted to Middlesex hospital with complications caused by shrapnel still lodged in his body. He was later transferred to Millbank hospital, where he died on 21st July, 1936.

William Cosgrove’s body was conveyed from London to Fishguard by road en route to Upper Aghada for interment in his native place. About five hundred members of the Old Comrades’ Association (O.C.A) of the R.M.F., met the vessel at Penrose Quay, Cork, and formed a guard of honour as the coffin was being taken from the boat to the waiting hearse. When the remains reached Upper Aghada, the coffin was removed from the hearse and shouldered by members of the Cork O.C.A., and local people to the burial place. The last post was sounded, while other ex-army men stood to attention. A British serviceman’s funeral was an unusual spectacle in those days, following the struggle for Irish independence. . On the 16th of June, 1940, the O.C.A. of the Royal Munster Fusiliers unveiled a memorial over the grave.

Every year, a small ceremony takes place at the war memorial in Whitegate village, to honour Irishmen who fought and died in all wars. Irish Army UN veterans mingle with British and US forces veterans in mutual respect and remembrance. A guard of honour is provided by the Irish Naval Service. 

Footnote:  The Dardanelles landings ended in failure and the withdrawal of Allied forces after ten months of intense fighting, at a cost of 200,000 lives. William Cosgrove’s portrait is given a place of honour in Collins Barracks Military Museum, Cork, beside veterans of the War of Independence. History has come full circle.

Doodlebug by Victor Sullivan

 A true story of Essex in World War Two    © 24/4/2010

"Please Mummy, may I go across the road to play with Carol?" eight-year-old Jane requested in a stage-whisper as she entered the kitchen where her mother was preparing one of the family's many rabbits for the evening meal. With a swift movement the rabbit was skillfully deprived of its skin as Jane watched the familiar procedure.

"That's not one of our own rabbits, is it, Mummy?"

"Er— of course not. I got this one from the butcher's shop. Why are you whispering?" asked her mother.

"Because Grandma is asleep in Daddy's chair again and I might wake her."

"Humph!" grunted her mother, the rabbit being of greater interest at that moment.

"Mummy, when Daddy comes home from the War will he let Grandma sleep in his chair like she does now?"

The eight-year old had asked that question more than once since her Grandma had come to live with them at number 14, Heath Drive in the quiet village of Theydon Bois at the edge of Epping Forest. Grandma's home and shop on Plaistow Road had been badly damaged by Luftwaffe bombs during one of the many air raids on the East End of London. Grandma had arrived on the doorstep of her married daughter Ivy's rural home accompanied by Jane's Aunt Cissy, a roll of carpet with a kitten inside it, some items of furniture and a piano with glinting shards of bomb-blasted window glass embedded in one end. Grandma felt safer, much safer, in Theydon Bois. Aunt Cissy went by train each day to work in London where her job entailed censoring mail. The Mansfield family and their next-door neighbours, the Johnstons, had jointly constructed an Anderson Air-Raid Shelter in the Johnstons' back garden. It had been used several times when the sirens wailed their rising and falling warning.  The village had experienced a few air raids.

Digging Party for the installation of the shared Anderson Air Raid Shelterat 14/16 Heath Drive. L to R: Mr. Moore,  Hod Mansfield (Jane’s father), Colin Dibble, Mr.Johnston. Mrs. Ivy Mansfield watches from over the fence.

"Will Daddy make Grandma sleep in some other chair when he comes home?" Jane asked again.

"We'll have to wait and see what happens when Daddy comes home, won't we."

"Mmmm. Please Mummy can I go to play with Carol?"

"Oh go on then!... Don't make a mess all over Carol's house... You should both play outside on a fine day like this."

"Yes Mummy!" Jane replied over her shoulder, already trotting down the driveway heading towards the home of her playmate directly across the empty road. As she reached the front door Jane became aware of a faint distant noise. An aircraft from nearby North Weald Airbase? She had often counted the Lancaster Bombers as they flew out on their deadly missions. She listened. No. This noise was not a Lancaster, nor was it the powerful snarl of a Spitfire. It gave her a creepy feeling, then, as she rang the bell she remembered what it was. She had heard it a few times before. The door opened and the welcoming, smiling face of Carol's mother looked down at her visitor as Jane pointed to the clear blue sky overhead said quietly,

"That's a Doodlebug, isn't it?"

Mrs. Forster's kindly smile vanished as she listened for a moment to the steady, harsh drone that was getting louder.

"You're right, Jane. It's a Doodlebug. Go home to your shelter!"

As Jane crossed the road her other friend, Meryl Brewley, was approaching and both girls pointed up at the sky together then ran to the back door of Jane's house. Jane burst in followed by Meryl and announced:

"There's a Doodlebug!"

"You'll call wolf once too often, young lady!" Jane's mother admonished her daughter and just then she became aware of the sound and realised the child was right as the rising wail of the Air Raid Siren confirmed the approaching danger.

"SHELTER!" barked her mother.

Jane and Meryl ran to the shared Anderson Shelter in the adjoining garden reaching it just as the now very loud noise of the Doodlebug suddenly stopped and Jane heard her mother yelling,

"Mum, Doodlebug! SHELTER! NOW!"

Jane leaped down over the few steps and dived into the Anderson Shelter followed by Meryl. The cramped metal structure was half under, half over the lawn, its roof covered in grassy turf. Glancing back Jane saw her mother run from the French window that led directly from the living room to the garden and almost throwing herself down the shelter steps. Meryl remembered her school training sessions, grabbed some pillows and clamped them over Jane's and her own ears. Jane's mother, Ivy, turned and screamed frantically towards the house:

"MUM!"

The end of the word was obliterated by the most ear-shattering explosion they had ever heard. The shock-wave hit and they sat listening to the the tinkling of shattered glass followed by thuds and thumps outside. They waited. How long should they wait? Would it be safe to go out now? Would the house be still there? Would the other houses be still there? Would Carol's house be there? And what about the rabbits and the chickens in their flimsy accommodation under the apple tree at the end of the garden? It suddenly grew darker, much darker, as a dense cloud of black smoke enveloped the garden.

"Grandma?" said Jane.  Her voice didn't sound right. Her ears were not working properly. She repeated it, louder this time and it came out as a shriek:

"GRANDMA!!!"

Without a word her mother ran towards the house. There was a changed and darker world outside. Where there had been fresh green grass, clear skies and sunshine there was now a pall of thick, black smoke. Black smuts fluttered down onto the grass where bits of strange stuff lay smoking between larger fragments of twisted metal. Glass splinters from shattered windows were scattered everywhere.

The siren's wail began again, this time holding a continuous steady note denoting ALL CLEAR.

They rushed towards the house, relieved to see that it was still standing. On the way they passed one half of the French Window leaning against a rose bush. All its glass panes were still intact. It's other half was still closed and bolted in its place but every one of its glass panes had been shattered.

On the living room floor Jane's Grandma was getting to her feet in the midst of broken glass, books, knitting wool, an empty wooden biscuit barrel and knocked-over chairs. Only her dignity had been injured and the gentle old lady said things about Germans that her little granddaughter should not have heard her utter. But then, her own house and butcher shop had been destroyed by an air raid.... There was a limit to one's polite tolerance.

"Did the Doodlebug throw you on the floor, Grandma?"

"Of course not."

"Tea?" asked Ivy.

"Yes please, Ivy. Unless there's something stronger?" 

As Ivy went towards the sideboard her young daughter and Meryl went exploring into the hall. There they stepped over the attic hatch-cover that had tumbled down the stairs and now lay beside the door-mat. The girls cautiously ventured out through the hole where the front door had been. It now dangled crazily from one hinge having been blasted open. What an exciting day! Doors blown off hinges, windows broken and thick black smoke swirling about. Now Jane could definitely say that her home had suffered real bomb damage. Her status in school would be assured. 

AFTERMATH

"JANE! MERYL! Come over and see what's happened to all our windows." Carol called excitedly from across the road but before Jane and Meryl could respond a convoy of emergency vehicles led by an ancient Fire Engine with a clanging bell came up Heath Drive, heading towards the column of smoke rising at the end of the road. Two trucks of ARP men followed and some Home Guard volunteers on bicycles. 

"I must go home first," declared Meryl, "they will be worried about me." 

Jane crossed the road to join her other excited friend.

An ambulance drove slowly past and a Red Cross nurse called out to the two girls:

"Is there anyone injured in there?"

"No thank you, not today!" came the cheeky reply.

The ambulance progressed slowly along Heath Drive, unsuccessfully seeking injured victims, closely followed by the village Policeman, P.C. Hart, panting along on his bicycle. The next vehicle to arrive was far more interesting. It was a large van with steam rising from a vent in its roof. Jane and Carol followed it and watched as the side panel was raised to reveal a counter from which tea was immediately offered to everyone. FREE!

"It's the WVS! C'mon, let's get some tea." prompted Carol. Jane hesitated. 

"Better ask at home first." She did and regretted her decision.

"No!" Jane's mother dismissed her daughter's pleading request abruptly. "We have our own tea, even if it is rationed. The Women's Voluntary Service has come to help those people who have had their homes and their kitchens destroyed. It's not for the likes of you."

 Jane was about to argue when her mother grabbed her by the hand and said,

"I'm coming with you to see what damage was done to Heath Drive by that Doodlebug."

At the gate they found another neighbour, Mrs. Wiltshire and her young son Raymond, calmly watching the spectacle. Other neighbours had also emerged from their houses or from shelters. Friendly hand-waves were exchanged but few words were uttered. Jane and her mother didn't get far. A team of men were approaching with ladders, rolls of tarpaulin, a wheelbarrow of tools and an assortment of other emergency materials.

"Temporary windows and roof repairs at your service! Anyone get hurt here?"

"Nobody hurt. Windows smashed, even the taped ones, doors off hinges, attic hatch came down. Haven't had a proper look around yet."

"That'll do for starters. Just show me around while these guys run up a ladder and check your roof-tiles. We don't want loose tiles sliding down on anyone."

"Anybody hurt further along Heath Drive?" Ivy asked.

"Just one caught by a bit of flying glass. Two houses at the end of the Weind lost their back walls. One old lady got a bad fright when the back wall of her house came down. The house at the end of Heath Drive is badly wrecked, Bennett's they told me. Mostly windows smashed in the rest. Lucky everyone at that end of Heath Drive had gone on an outing, a picnic in Epping Forest someone said. They'll get a hell of a surprise when they get back, especially the Bennetts."

"Which house did it hit?" asked Ivy.

"None! Hitler missed! Bloody thing landed in the field. The farmer came down and is hopping mad as it burned one of his haystacks."

"My Grandma is hopping mad too." said Jane, "She said awful things about Germans. She said they were...."

"JANE! That will DO! Go play with Carol."

And she did. 

The two friends began to collect bits of Doodlebug from Carol's garden. Some of the bigger pieces were still warm. When Meryl returned and joined them they collected pieces from Jane's garden, then from the roadside and from other people's gardens. By the time their mothers came looking for them they had assembled a satisfying collection of twisted Doodlebug souvenirs. They intended to bring a few samples to school as evidence. That would show them! What an exciting day it had been. Pity about the WVS tea though.

That evening Jane's Auntie Cissy stepped from the LNER train at Theydon Bois station on her way home from her job censoring letters. There was an unusual buzz of excited chatter in the station booking hall as she passed through and she overheard "Doodlebug… Heath Drive… houses... V-1... destroyed... bomb... fire engines... many damaged…" 

Cissy ran all the way from the Station through the village, along Dukes Avenue and into Heath Drive, arriving breathless and gasping at Number 14, and found it was still there with everyone in it unharmed. She had to ask several questions  to elicit what had happened. They told her  that a V-1 flying bomb had exploded at the end of the road and broke some windows.

Jane,leaving her home on way to school. In her left hand she carries her gas mask (not visible)

The V1 impact site is at the end of the footpath, 125 metres away.

EPILOG:

I lived in Theydon Bois for a few years in the late 1950s. The crater left by the V-1 Doodlebug was still clearly visible at Heath Drive then. So was Jane. She came down a snow-clad hill on a toboggan and crashed into me. We got married in 1960 and moved to Ireland where we celebrated our Golden Wedding in 2010. 

I count myself very fortunate that Adolf Hitler's V-1 Doodlebug missed Jane Mansfield of 14, Heath Drive, by 125 metres!

       

Surprise Rail Trip to the Dentist, by Victor Sullivan

 ©   2009.    Overcoming travel problems in Ireland during World War 2

World War II had brought increased hardship to many people in Neutral Ireland in the early 1940s but at the age of five or six I was barely aware of any such difficulties apart from being unable to sample things I heard about or had seen illustrations of, such as bananas. It was a time when initiative was admired and rewarded. A time for turning the blind eye and for rule bending. Winks and nods became more meaningful while furtive glances and calculated silences became a communications art form. A flair for living on one’s wits ensured the survival of the fittest in reasonably comfortable circumstances.

My mother was principal teacher at Meenies National School two miles from Drimoleague and my father was manager of Warner’s grocery store and bakery in Bantry, twelve miles away. He commuted between Drimoleague and Bantry six days each week in his black Ford Prefect, ZB4004.

          

            Ford Prefect ZB4004 outside 'Aurora' in 1940

We lived half a mile outside Drimoleague in a house named Aurora that overlooked both the road and the single-track railway that led to Bantry. I learned to count the wagons on each passing goods train at a very early age and still, many decades later, I automatically begin to count the wagons whenever I see a moving freight train. Wave at the Driver and Fireman on the locomotive or at the Guard in his Guard’s van at the end of the goods train and the response was usually a reciprocal wave. Like many boys of my age I wanted to be an Engine Driver or a Guard on a goods train. I envied that Guard in his own private accomodation, trundling along behind the swaying wagons, day after day, with nothing to do but blow a whistle and wave a green or red flag occasionally.

Rationing and ration-books, shortages of tea, sugar sweets, kerosene and associated black market dealings had little impact on me but when private cars were banned from the roads of Ireland and ZB4004 was propped up on wooden blocks 'to ease the tyres,' I had to cycle two miles up-hill to school.

My father was confronted with a more serious commuting problem as the only morning passenger train ran from Bantry via Drimoleague to Cork. It returned from Cork to Bantry each evening but he needed to go in the opposite directions. As the limited bus service would have got him to his workplace much too late, he borrowed his brother’s bicycle and undertook to cycle the twelve mile journey to Bantry each morning and pedaled home each evening to Drimoleague, exhausted and frequently wet and cold.

He was a respected and popular figure in Bantry where he seemed to know hundreds of people by name and they all knew him as Jimmy-in-Warners. Back in those hard times, to know someone with access to sources of extra tea, sugar and cigarettes was a status symbol. To be on cosy, first-name terms with Jimmy-in-Warners was a status to be envied indeed.

 Jimmy-in-Warners

Officially the following event never happened… But it did and I am the only living participant and first hand witness.

Following a bout of severe toothache, I was told one morning that I was not going to school that day. I was to go to Bantry with my father, to visit a very close friend of his, a dentist. All that way to Bantry! Twelve miles on the crossbar of that bike! It sounded potentially more painful than the toothache.

We started out with me perched grimly on the crossbar but we immediately headed in the wrong direction and after only half a mile we turned left and dismounted at the level crossing on the Bantry side of Drimoleague railway station where the gate-keepers were the Dinneen family, who we knew well. With the bicycle, we went inside the stone wall and waited as the heavy white and red level crossing gates were closed against road traffic and the lever pulled to signal to the Driver of the morning goods train waiting at the station that the way was open to Bantry. One short whistle blast followed by heavy chuffing soon brought the familiar black tank engine into view as we edged our way towards it between the railway tracks and the high hedge that separated the rails from Garda Sergeant Murphy’s vegetable garden.

I had never realised just how big those wheels were until the moment they passed so close to me on that morning. They were really big! Even the small wheels were big! I could have reached out and touched them. I felt the heat of the locomotive on my face as it passed with an accompaniment of swirling clouds of steamy vapour wrapping around us. There was a lovely hot, oily, engine smell too. The Engine Driver looked down and raised one finger to my father as the queue of wagons rumbled slowly and steadily past. For once I was too overawed and too close to count them. As the Guard's Van approached, the train slowed to a crawl but did not stop.

'Put your arms up for the Guard to catch.' My father ordered and hoisted me into the air, sidestepping along beside the moving train as he did so. Two strong hands hauled me up into the very dark interior of the Guard’s van. The bicycle followed, then my father was hauled up, the door was firmly shut and the chuffing grew louder and more rapid at the front end of the train.

A strong stink of creosote and wood-smoke in a world of almost total blackness was my first impression of the Guard’s domain. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom I identified a pair of tiny slit windows at both sides of the creaking mobile dungeon. These windows were mounted in that bulge at the side of most Guard’s vans, one pane facing forwards, one backwards. My attempt to see anything clearly outside was frustrated by the grimy glass. I was not tall enough to see through the small glass pane in the door. The Guard fed scraps of wood into a tiny pot-bellied stove in the centre of the floor and engaged in solemn conversation with my father. The van’s two pairs of wheels made a thump-thump, – thump-thump, – thump-thump sound that I felt pounding through my feet, quite unlike the familiar clickety click rhythm of the passenger coach wheels.

After about twenty five minutes the goods train began to slow down as it approached Bantry and the Guard opened the door. Welcome daylight flooded in and I was instructed to stand by the door and be ready to disembark from the moving train at the Barrack Road level crossing, immediately after we had passed over the metal bridge that spanned the road to Glengarriff. Apparently we, the only unofficial passengers, would not be going all the way to Bantry station. Again the train slowed to a crawl but did not stop. My father jumped down first and the Guard lowered me into his arms from the moving train. Then the bicycle was handed down, a wave to the driver and the train increased speed for its last half mile approach to Bantry Station.

There, standing by the side of the shining rails, my father made me solemnly promise that I would not tell a living soul how we travelled to Bantry. It was a big, big secret and it demanded a huge amount of secret-keeping effort for many years. I could never tell my younger sister, Audrey, nor could I ever mention it to my playmate Stephen because his dad was a policeman, Garda Quinn. Prior to that momentous day I had never even suspected that my ever-so-respectable father travelled unofficially and illegally on the morning goods train.

Wheeling the bicycle between us we walked down Barrack Road which was then a steep, rough lane, that brought us directly onto Barrack Street and just a few dozen paces from my father's workplace at Warner’s grocery shop. The shop operated a delivery service and I was handed over to the message-boy for delivery by pony-cart to one of my father’s close friends, the local Jewish dentist. I was instructed to address the dentist as Mr.Birkahn, which I did as he welcomed me into his surgery. He told me tales of his adventures with my father while he deftly removed the offending tooth. He called me a very brave boy and gave me sixpence. Later that day I travelled home to Drimoleague, unaccompanied and minus one tooth, on a very ordinary bus. It stopped precisely outside the gate of Aurora, (Jimmy-in-Warners knew the bus driver and conductor also).

I kept the secret of my freight-train journey for two decades, then, when the West Cork Railway closed in the early 1960s, I felt it would be safe to tell the story. When I did tell the tale nobody believed me until my father added the following anecdote:

One September morning Jimmy-in-Warners was, as usual, commuting illegally to Bantry in the Guard’s van of the goods train when the train slowed to an unexpected stop. The Guard looked out and saw the Fireman running back towards him while the Engine Driver could be seen removing his overalls in a field, having climbed over a fence.

'The runs?'

'It’s the mushrooms. That field is white with them. Driver says pick all we can and Jimmy-in-Warners can sell them for us in his shop.'

Boiler suits were removed, their leg-ends knotted and the makeshift sacks were quickly filled with nature’s unexpected bounty of wild mushrooms. Delighted with an opportunity to repay the many favours he owed the train crew, Jimmy-in-Warners joined in the mushroom picking. How he managed to retain any degree of decorum while wheeling his bicycle, laden with two bulging mushroom-stuffed boiler suits down Barrack Road to his shop in Barrack Street is not recorded but word of mushrooms-in-Warners went around the town very rapidly. Soon a sign appeared in Warner’s shop window ‘Mushrooms Sold Out'. The mushroom takings were handed over to the train crew next morning together with two neatly folded boiler suits, each wrapped in brown paper and tied up with string.


Soon after that incident Ford Prefect ZB4004 reappeared traversing the road between Drimoleague and Bantry and one evening Jimmy-in-Warners brought home bananas. The War was really over. There would be no more illicit rail travel.

The Guard's Van in which we travelled illegally.

.