Belfast Blitz Agricultural Production (With an Output of Belfast Blitz Campbell College
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The Old Campbellian 2016 The Belfast Blitz agricultural production (with an output of Belfast Blitz Campbell College . During the 4 and 5 May 1941 air raid, 15,000 eggs each year, 1940 -1945, as well as Campbell College was struck with tragic vegetables and grain). - 75 Years the Belfast blitz consequences. Three large huts behind the Jeff Dudgeon (xxxx) By Dr Brian Barton Headmaster’s office were demolished by In mid-1940, after the fall of France, when high explosives; one of these had been used German invasion seemed imminent, as a as the officers’ mess. Three others in course deterrent any ground located within five In May 2015, I proposed to Belfast City Coun- resident RAMC and the Pioneer of construction, and a building known as the miles of airstrips near Belfast that was cil that we commemorate the 75th Corps were killed, and possibly ‘North Block’, were set ablaze. deemed suitable for enemy airborne anniversary of the Blitz and put up a also patients. The walking med- landings, was obstructed. significant memorial at City Hall to the ical cases had been marshalled An anti-aircraft gunner later claimed that the victims, and it was agreed. Unfortunately, into the underground shelters premises had been saved from more As a result the playing fields at Campbell because of issues raised by Sinn Fein and the which pupils had construct- extensive damage because the suddenly took ‘on a strange appearance and Alliance Party, the memorial proposal is on ed in 1939 and all escaped servicemen based there were ‘well became straddled overnight with hurdles, hold and may be in jeopardy. unhurt. organised’ as fire-fighters. goalposts, cricket screens and every shape Staff Serjeant, Norman and form of improvised landing obstruction’. Alongside the erection of fifteen plaques to Seaward aged 30, was how- The Campbell fatalities represented the mark the sites of worst destruction and death ever killed ferrying bedbound army’s greatest loss of life in a single incident Above all, the patriotic spirit had always run (including one at Campbell College), a very patients to safety. His grave- during this raid and that is before patient deep amongst the staff and pupils of the Courtest Belfast News Letter. well-attended civic service of remembrance stone in the City Cemetery numbers are included. school. They were conscious of, and once was held in April at St Anne’s Cathedral joint- again preserved, its exceptional tradition of says “Treasured in Life. Loved Unlike Westminster, Stormont government ly with St Patrick’s Church (Donegall Street). in Death. Wife and Baby. ” In the wards, 400 beds were rendered military service. At its Speech Day in 1939, ministers did not launch any official scheme ‘uninhabitable’. All ‘walking cases’ in the held during the last week of the summer for the evacuation of women and children The Belfast Blitz consisted of two severe air main hospital building had been able to take term, the Headmaster had stated in his The Officers Mess took a direct with the outbreak of war. As a consequence, raids on 15 April and 4 May 1941 which killed Thomas Harris, Major Edward V. Hemelryk refuge in underground shelters built by the report: hit, killing four soldiers, in- initially, local schools experienced little around 800 and 200 people respectively. DSO, Pte. Felix Marasi, Lance/Cpl. Harry pupils in 1939, and all of them escaped ‘Tomorrow, forty-eight of the boys here cluding two RAMC. Three large hospital huts disruption beyond the carrying of gas masks, There were two smaller raids before and Norman Pickup, and Pte. Kenneth Lawrence unhurt. The surviving records of the other present will have spent their last day at were totally destroyed by high explosives and occasional drills in their use. after on 7 April and 6 May respectively. while the school’s north block was hit and Shaw. military hospitals in Belfast suggest that they school; full of the hopes and ambitions Two other RAMC soldiers killed on 4 and 5 of youth, they are going out into this very set on fire. Three other huts in the course of By December 1940, however, the A substantial memorial to the 1,000 dead is construction were set ablaze. May 1941, Pte. Montague James Burbage troubled world. That they will prove them- premises of some of them were being used The Trustees of now being considered for Belfast City Hall A mystery surrounds both the numbers of (24th General Hospital) buried in Alderholt, the Ulster Historical Foundation selves worthy of the school, I am confident.’ as shelters, ARP stores and wardens’ posts, and the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland grounds, something I am working towards Dorset, and Pte. Denholm Douglas buried in cordially invite you to the launch of His ‘confidence’ was fully justified; 1,025 of dead and their names at Campbell, as the and had been designated as rest centres as chair of the council’s Diversity Working Rutherglen, are probably from the Campbell those who had attended Campbell joined Commonwealth War Graves Commission in the event of an air raid. By then, a small Group. We have already had the promise College dead. The the armed forces, they won over 270 military does not record place or cause of death, just number had also established branches in of considerable financial assistance from If anyone can provide clues to the names of awards and decorations, and over 100 of date and burial ground. the countryside for those the Northern Ireland War Memorial whose the hospital dead or their stories it would be Belfast Blitz them lost their lives. pupils who had evacuated (Richmond The City in the War Years museum is in Talbot Street. most welcome. The names of the thirteen soldiers killed at Lodge, Victoria College and Ashleigh). Newtownards Aerodrome on 16 April 1941 in Jeffrey Dudgeon (UUP Councillor, Balmoral BRIAN BARTON At a memorial service held on 10 November It is my intention that our memorial will the Easter Tuesday raid have been ascer- DEA) 1946, the Principal stated in an emotionally But a few months later, after the first major GUEST SPEAKER include the names of all the civilians, civil Dr Michael Foy charged address: tained and are detailed in Andy Glenfield’s blitz had occurred, this slow pace of change defence and military killed in Northern invaluable website ‘The Second World War was shattered, and Belfast’s Public Record Office of Northern Ireland Ireland during the German air raids. in Northern Ireland’ under Greater Belfast 2 Titanic Boulevard ‘We are met here today to pay tribute to the educational system was severely Belfast BT3 9HQ By engraving those names, the monument Tuesday 12 May memory of those former members of the http://ww2ni.webs.com/. disrupted. As a result of the air raids will have both immediacy and poignancy, 2.00pm for 2.30pm school whose names have been recited as we The gravestones of soldiers in Belfast City thirty-nine public elementary schools were much like that for the Titanic. People will stood – those who went and did not return.’ Cemetery and Milltown Cemetery who died ‘destroyed or partly destroyed.’ come to read them and remember. on 4 and 5 May however tell of some who Campbell College suffered considerable ‘In this hall was centred their life at were presumably killed at Campbell. Further dislocation was caused by the mass death and damage during the second major Campbell, here each day, morning and evacuation of staff and children (over half air raid on the night of 4 and 5 May. The four Royal evening, they met for prayers, here they sat of Belfast’s population – 220,000 – had fled with you on festival days, on Speech Days, Army Medical from the city by late May 1941), and by the Luckily the pupils had been evacuated in at concerts, at plays. Here in these buildings Corps gravestone deleterious impact of the air raids on the 1940 to the Northern Counties Hotel in names are: Pte. R S V P they lived and learnt and grew to manhood. concentration and receptivity of pupils. ULSTER HISTORICAL FOUNDATION 49 MALONE ROAD Here too on each returning Armistice Day, Portrush. The casualties instead came from Herbert Mon- BELFAST BT9 6RY No. 24 (London) General Hospital which had TEL 028 9066 1988 they stood in silence as we have done today, tague Brooker, From the outset, Campbell College e-mail: [email protected] taken over the school in 1940. and in remembrance of the service unto Staff Serjeant experienced greater disruption than most Norman Leslie death of another generation, dedicated their other schools. Many of its pupils were evac- own lives, as we shall shortly do, to the glory Twelve or perhaps fourteen soldiers from the Seaward, Sgt. Brian’s new book. uated to Portrush from September 1940 until of. God’ February 1946, in what was aptly named were not especially busy ‘Operation Seachange.’ during the air raids. ‘God and the service of their fellow men. Archibald For example, the report for Donegall Road Twice in the lives of the older among us we This was because a number of its buildings (part of the Union Infirmary) merely states have seen the spirit of service of a genera- Herbert Sanderson Stewart, had been requisitioned by the War Office and Major Richard Fowler Images Clockwise: that it ‘attended to [a] few casualties, both tion tested to the full. Twice we have seen for use as a military hospital (i.e. ‘24 General civil and military’ and, at Stranmillis, it is the Sons of Campbell, when the test came, Ward.