ASKED if he remembered the old B Huts and Nissan-style huts that the garrisoned forces would have used in the war years as they were billeted around the village in preparation for fighting on the front, Billy McClintock recalled how a 'B' Hut was erected down at Tullyard (Duncastle Road).
“There was a shooting range down there and there was a flat field and there was a steep bank that they used as a shooting range, and if you look you can still see the bare space on the bottom of the banking where the targets were, it’s on your left-h
and-side as you go down to Derry,” he says.
Known as much for the flow of alcohol as for their association with ‘the Boys who fear no noise’, the Huts gained a certain amount of notoriety
Chuckling, Billy confides: “Oh what! There was one in Newbuildings as well, and there was another one at Kildoag and there was one at Tullintrain and they were you see because there were Platoons all over the place.
“There was Army personnel stationed in Donemana, there was. It was in 19 and 41, I don’t know when they came first whether it was 1940 or in 41, but they must only have been there in the summer time because they were under canvas, and they were English - they were the Royal Artillery. I don’t know how long they were stationed there for, I think it was six months or so, but they were billeted on a field belonging to the Craigs out the Strabane Road on the left-hand-side. It was RJ Craig, JP, who owned the land and that field’s still known as the soldiers’ field.”
As a man Billy remembers the JP as a high-up member of the Presbyterian Church, who possessed a rather intimidating air of authority.
“His grandson, Lesley, is still living up there in the Big House yet. He’s a nice enough fella, but in the old days all those auld fellas were a bit grumpy. I wouldn’t have run up the road away from him, but he would not have been sociable with me for he would have had his own circle in society. When he would have come the length of me he would have grunted at me, de ye know?”
Perhaps being a JP in those days was a bigger thing than it is now.
“They had powers in those days when they could have sent you to jail and there were people...there was another man R J Allen, Robert Allen, JP, and he would have sent you to special courts in the barracks - any of these wandering people, like what they’d call ‘tramps’ in the old days, and if he has committed some offence and been arrested he would go before the JP and he would have been sent down to Derry jail for a month.”
The conversation reverts to talk of the Army lads again, and Billy recalls how they were a familiar sight in the village and the girls round about were quite taken with them.
“They would have mixed in village life and the girls was always falling over themselves about them. It might have been the uniform because they certainly never had any money. Now the Yanks, the Yanks had plenty of money - they were up about Strabane, up about Ardmore, they were in all these big villas and these big estates.
“The girls were all after them for the boxes of chocolates, the cigarettes and the nylon stockings - they had lots of everything,” he laughs.
