80 years on...
Corner of York Street and Lower Donegall Street, Belfast. Wikicommons
This month marks the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day, which signalled the coming end of the Second World War a few months later. Sarah Harding talks to three Presbyterians about their recollections of that time.
Dorothy Malcolm (née Adair) Kilmakee Presbyterian Church Dorothy Malcolm has just turned 100 and is a member of Kilmakee Presbyterian Church in Dunmurry. She was 14 when the war started and was living in Bangor with her mother and father and two sisters. Her father was a grocer who had a shop on Main Street and they attended Trinity Presbyterian, also on Main Street, a few doors up. She vividly recalls the ships that would have been in Belfast Lough. “There were always warships. Any boat crossing the Atlantic never travelled on its own – they travelled in convoy. You’d maybe have got up on a Sunday morning and there could have been 50 or 60 ships off Bangor. It was amazing – but we got used to seeing them. And then the next morning, you would get up and there wouldn’t be a ship to be seen.” Along with the ships came sailors. Dorothy says, “There were always sailors in Bangor – all different nationalities.” In her mid to late teens, Dorothy became a hostess for the American Red 18
Herald May 2025
Cross, which had taken a bit older, travelling to the Floral Hall in Belfast. For over Pickie Hotel. This Dorothy and many others, role was to help entertain the war was actually quite soldiers on their time off. a social time because there “We played table were so many dances. She tennis with the boys, had recalls hearing about the coffee with them and end of war, when she was just talked to them. We working at Stormont. danced to records and “We knew it was played snooker too. It imminent. I worked in the was generally just a club Dorothy Malcolm (née Adair) Ministry of Agriculture and for boys to come and we were waiting to go in relax.” and have our dinner. We were standing Dancing was a favourite pastime in the dinner queue when somebody for Dorothy. There was one particular American she remembers dancing with came in and said, ‘The war is officially who came down from Langford Lodge, over!’, and everybody was so delighted. where some of the men were stationed. But suddenly a quiet voice said, ‘The dances will never be the same again’. I She says, “I never went out with him, think we were all silently thinking the but he was a beautiful dancer.” same thing!” She fondly remembers going to the Dorothy knew she was fortunate dance hall in Bangor, and when she was to be able to dance, because she had We were standing in the contracted polio at the age of three from the water at Bangor seafront. Her dinner queue when mother had taken her and her sister down to the beach. somebody came in and had gone into the water and fallen said, “The war is officially – “II was wearing a white dress and over!” blue sash. There was a boy sitting on
