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Family Fortunes: My father’s part in protecting wartime Belfast

On our excursions to Belfast as I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, he would often point out locations where they had carried out their grim tasks

On the right is my father, Eddie Mac Flynn, assisted by Paddy Blaney

Rory E Mac Flynn
Thu Jul 9 2015 - 11:00

Northern Ireland was notoriously ill-prepared for the protection of the populace during the air raids on Belfast in 1941, and the feeble efforts depicted in this photograph would seem to confirm that.

The two men in white coats in my photograph, busy with stirrup pump and bucket, are playing their small part in the proposed defence of the city.

They are both junior doctors in the Mater Infirmorum Hospital in Belfast. On the right is my father, Eddie Mac Flynn, assisted by Paddy Blaney.

The idea, apparently, was to defend the roof of the hospital from flares that the German planes dropped on the city prior to the bombers arriving.

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Whether they ever saw active service on those roofs, I never discovered. However , they and their young colleagues were tasked to assist the ARP (air-raid precautions)in touring the city after the all-clear in order to gather up the casualties and bring them to temporary morgues.

The writer Brian Moore's father was the chief surgeon at the time, and, as the family home had been damaged in those raids, they were residing in the hospital. Brian went on to portray these events masterfully in The Emperor of Ice Cream, a semi-autobiographical account of wartime Belfast.

My mother, who worked as a nurse in the Mater at that time, pressed me to read the book as soon as she felt it was suitable.

On our many excursions to Belfast as I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, my father would often point out locations where they had carried out their grim tasks.

I vividly remember his descriptions of gathering up the remains of an ARP man in Carlisle Circus, and of the dead being brought in from a dance hall, having been killed by a blast wave.

As the Troubles of the recent past escalated, the dead of those spring nights in Belfast in 1941 seemed consigned to history, even though the event was still in living memory.

I don’t think my father and mother or any else serving in the Mater at that time ever forgot. We would love to receive your family memories, anecdotes, traditions, mishaps and triumphs.

  • Email 350 words and a relevant photograph if you have one to familyfortunes@irishtimes.com. A fee will be paid