‘Winston Churchill, who was my hero, spoke to the nation ... and there was great relief’
South Belfast grandmother Mollie Blair (84) has two daughters with her late husband Robert. On VE Day 1945, the former teacher was living in Dunmurry with her mum, Kathleen, and her dad, Drummond.
“During the war we lived in Dunmurry — my mum, dad, my grandparents and my uncle,” she says. “My most vivid memory of the war is the sound of the German bombers flying overhead in the darkness. They had a very odd, humming, upand-down kind of sound that was very frightening. But it was also quite exciting.
“When the sirens wailed we went under the stairs, which would have done no good at all looking back on it. I heard the sound of the bombers returning usually from bombing Belfast, which was pretty bad.
“I also remember one the planes crashed up on the mountain and we all trooped up to see it. I was only about eight or nineyears-old.
“In school we had the windows all covered with white strips and we had an air raid shelter there. We always went to school with our gas masks in little boxes. We had a drill we did in case the sirens went and we had to take cover.
“A lot of it was exciting. I remember seeing barrage balloons over Belfast, which to my childlike eyes looked like big grey elephants in the sky. I don’t remember being terribly frightened. My parents were always very reassuring. My father was in the Home Guard and I was very proud of him. He had to drive through Belfast and that was pretty perilous. But the sound of the aircraft did frighten me.”
Mollie remembers VE Day in particular as a pivotal moment in her own lifetime.
“Winston Churchill (above) was my hero,” she says. “And he spoke to the nation on VE Day at around 2pm. We had a wireless at home and we listened there. And that memory is all bound up with dashing over to the field and the great happiness and relief everywhere.
“We had a big celebration in our village. We were given a bag of buns and a mineral drink, which I remember vividly. There was a bonfire built in the field beside us. It was so exciting that night, because people were so terribly happy, smiling, shouting and waving flags. And we got more buns and lemonade, which really made my day. I remember feeling great relief. There would be no more sounds of horrible aircraft flying over our house.”
She says there are some similarities between wartime and now.
“I hear this saying, ‘we are all in this together’, and that is like the war,” she says. “The only difference was, we could hug each other then, but not now. And that is difficult. But I do think that it has brought people together, as it did then.”
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