Pádraig’s story

I was born on 17th March 1941 so I was about two and a half months old when the North Strand was bombed. We lived in 3 Waterloo Avenue which is the cul-de-sac just beside the Church of Ireland and School on the North Strand. We were about 600 Meters away from the point of impact. My parents had been hearing the various aircraft over the city for probably about an hour and a half. At one point my father went to the hall door with me in his arms to look out to see what was going on with what would have been the one remaining aircraft. Just as he did so the bomb dropped and of course shook the house and did some ceiling damage. I think that being downhill from Newcomen Bridge reduced the effect on our house depite our relative proximity. So I am a witness and survivor. For all my years of going to school at North William St and St Canices and O’Connell School on NCR I walked across what we called “the Bombed area” a bumpy packed clay expanse with lumps of stones protruding and with very little growing on it.