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I can recall my parents’ keen interest in those crackly BBC news bulletins on the war’s progress

As a three-to-four-year-old, I found it difficult to understand how those strange hissing and crackling noises could demand such undivided attention. Photograph: istock

Brendan J Nangle
Fri May 3 2019 - 06:00

“Shhhhhh!” I could always detect the urgency in my father’s demand for silence. He would lean towards his Pye radio set (or wireless, as it was called) in its polished wooden casing on the table. With his large hands, he would carefully manipulate the knobs as he strove to obtain the clearest signal while watching the tiny illuminated dial. My mother would sit and wait, her arm around me. As a three-to-four-year-old, I found it difficult to understand how those strange hissing and crackling noises could demand such undivided attention. But it wasn’t those sounds that my parents were straining to hear: it was a voice, barely audible. Had I been a little older, I might have noted some telling words such as bombing … aircraft … troops … Allies … Germans … casualties.

A wire stretched from the back of the wireless to the top of the window from where it hung outside. This, my father explained, was to catch the radio waves which came all the way from London. Another wire wound its way to somewhere under the table. I marvelled that my father could capture those mysterious invisible waves on his wireless. That apparatus was a thing of wonder.

World war

The second World War was raging the year I was born. How my parents must have worried about the future of the child they had brought into the world. While Ireland was nominally neutral, German bombs had already fallen on the North Strand area of Dublin within days of my birth. Could more bombs be expected? What if the Allies lost the war? So much uncertainty, so much anxiety.

While my memories are extremely faint, I can recall sensing my parents’ keen interest in those crackly BBC news bulletins delivered with emotionless English accents. Ireland’s only official radio station; Radio Éireann (originally termed “2RN”) and broadcasting from the GPO in Dublin, did not provide detailed information on the war’s progress due to questionable government censorship. Hence, my parents relied on BBC broadcasts. When my father uttered his customary “Shhhhhh”, it was for a very good reason.

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Ceasefire

Time passed, and I remember my parents telling me of the celebrations after the ceasefire was declared at one minute past midnight on Tuesday, May 8th, 1945. The war in Europe was over. The need to listen with such intense anxiety to my father’s wonderful Pye wireless had abated.