1943
1943
I was born on 7th July 1943 at a time when the largest tank battle in history was taking place. This was the battle of Kursk in Russia, over 1,700 miles from my birthplace in County Down in the north-eastern corner of Ireland. I didn’t take much notice of the battle at the time, being fully occupied with taking my first gasps of this strange new stuff called “air”
Although I was born in July, I had made my presence felt before then. While my mother was pregnant, she took a craving for ice cream. This was a luxury not readily available in the countryside, in war time, in 1943. So my father rode his bicycle 17 miles to Belfast, found a shop which sold ice cream, bought some and rode 17 miles back with it in a billycan. I suppose the can was packed round with straw or newspaper to stop the ice cream from melting. So, after a 34 mile round bicycle trip he presented the ice cream to his wife, only to be told she’d changed her mind and didn’t want it any more. I never found out just what my father’s reaction was! But I’m sure it was more restrained than many men’s would have been because he was devoted to my mother and she was to him.
