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**Guest** · 31-05-2021, 01:23 PM

During the early hours of Saturday, May 31st, 1941, Mary Tarrant awoke to a loud thumping of Bofors anti-aircraft guns firing into the sky. The 32-year-old daughter of a prominent, Dublin-based livestock merchant got up and went to her stepmother’s room.
“Well sure there’s an awful lot of banging going on and noise,” she said excitedly. Her stepmother, who was concerned for the safety of Mary’s brother, who had gone out that night, replied, “I think we’ll go down and make a cup of tea.”
Irish air observers had earlier detected significant numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft in the skies over Dublin; these aircraft were not in formation and appeared to be circling erratically over the city. Searchlights were switched on to track the intruders and a series of flares were fired – tricolour flares to indicate to the German crews that they had entered Irish sovereign airspace, followed by red flares to signal to depart immediately or be fired upon. These signals went unheeded and the anti-aircraft batteries around Dublin Bay opened fire.

**joan mack** · 02-06-2021, 10:53 PM

I was a year old we lived in North wall My Mam my dad and me, My Dad was not home when the bombing started and as the windows came in my Mother wrapped me in a mattress but as the night worsened she put me in a pram and ran through the night up to her mother in Crumlin, We later moved to Crumlin and we never returned to the North wall, I often visited an aunt who still lived in the North wall We Got a ferry over to her, I can still remember her telling us the ferry was going out of service

**Guest** · 03-06-2021, 11:47 AM

Originally posted by joan mack View Post

I was a year old we lived in North wall My Mam my dad and me, My Dad was not home when the bombing started and as the windows came in my Mother wrapped me in a mattress but as the night worsened she put me in a pram and ran through the night up to her mother in Crumlin, We later moved to Crumlin and we never returned to the North wall, I often visited an aunt who still lived in the North wall We Got a ferry over to her, I can still remember her telling us the ferry was going out of service

I never heard that it affected the North Wall, the bombs fell were the clinic and the flats are by the canal.

**Vico2** · 03-06-2021, 02:05 PM

As I understood it the bombs were dropped on the north strand. My aunt was a Red Cross volunteer was there helping out and she said that most of the children brought out had only a vest on them. The families were so poor that the children didn't have much in the line of clothes. Denis Guiney opened his shop and filled boxes with clothes and donated them for the families.

I never heard of the north wall being mentioned in that connection at all

**joan mack** · 03-06-2021, 10:30 PM

Thank God we were not near enough to be wiped out but our small house with others had windows blown out and doors blown in and up to the day of her death my mother spoke about her blind panic. it did not only affect the North strand which did receive the worst of the bombing but the after effects went much further

**Vico2** · 04-06-2021, 11:53 AM

I can well imagine that Joan, those bombs would have been very powerful, probably lots of windows and doors for a good distance around were blown out.

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