I listened to a story of a war hero today, but this hero did not go to war the war came to him. Gerry Potts was 13 at the time of the Belfast Blitz. He remembered a time in school when he had to get fitted for a gas mask, he told me how uncomfortable and ill-fitting they were. But he had to keep it with him at all times.

Gerry started work on Easter of 1940 in Orangefield post office and soon after moved into the shoe trade, he laughed as he told me it was a promotion. He was always in Belfast and never left unless he was going smuggling.

Any time he went he would go to Dublin as his cousins lived there and they exchanged goods, his cousin was always short of tea, so Gerry would trade tea for some butter. Of course there were rations but there were seven people in his family so they found they had some surplus.

I asked Gerry how he got the goods back into the country, he told me he always went with his mother and was unsure how she got them back. He did remember his mother bringing material back over the border, she simply wrapped it around her body. He went on to say that he remembered that some people got prosecuted, but if you were just smuggling a small amount the police would simply take it off you and nothing would be done.

I asked Gerry about the air-raids, “I was there through all three air-raids, the first concentrated on the shipyards and the air-craft factory. The second raid, the Easter Tuesday raid, it was a very big one. I remember the German bombing was very accurate.”

Gerry was on the Woodstock road, he explained that two bombs fell there, one on a house in Hatton drive and the other was outside a co-op store fortunately there were no casualties. Gerry’s father served in the Boer war and volunteered for the Home Guard but was never called up.

His brother was an apprentice in the shipyard at the time of the war, he applied for the Navy but was not accepted. They thought it would be more of a benefit for him to stay and help build ships.

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