I grabbed the wee boy from the cot and ran like a madman out the door

There was a good crowd in the bar of the Broomhill Hotel. Mostly business reps, who stayed in the hotel all week and checked out on a Friday to go home for the weekend.

Around 8.30pm, the manager came running into the bar. John never hurried, so I knew something was badly wrong. He had received a phone call – bomb in the hotel.

‘Get everyone out now, Joe.’ He was ghostly white.

The alarm bell went off at reception, and it could be heard in Buncrana. We told all the customers to go to the car park on the Limavady Road.

Some of the waiting staff were clearing the restaurant, and kitchen, while other staff were emptying the rooms on the ground level. I told John I would clear the lower rooms, with another member of staff who would guide them up the stairs to the front door exit.

As we were bringing the last of the residents out, I noticed a couple fighting to get back in, but the army, who had arrived, stopped them.

They were shouting at the army, but they were Norwegians, and spoke little English.

Suddenly, I remembered earlier that day seeing a small child with them. I called to them I would get the child, by signalling this by rocking my arms, as if holding a baby.

I dived back in, down the stairs, to their room. I could hear the baby crying with the alarm sound.

In my panic, I had forgotten to get the key for the room. I booted and booted the door, and finally the lock gave way.

I grabbed the wee boy from the cot, and ran like a madman up the stairs, and out the front door.

I will never forget the look on the parents’ faces, as we came through the door, and up through the car park.

The parents had nipped up for a bite to eat in the restaurant, while the baby was fast asleep in the cot. No one expected a bomb scare.

Approximately ten minutes later, the bomb went off. It was not a large bomb, but did some damage to a number of rooms, on the same floor that the baby was on.

Later that night, any residents whose rooms were damaged were all moved to the upper floor.

All food and drinks the next day were provided free, and residents checking out all received a refund in cash.

John Miskimmon was not one to penny pinch, and always looked after his staff, and customers, always.

Later that day, John called me in to his office. He thanked me for all I had done, and the cool head I had kept.

He said, he would like to show his appreciation, as he felt I had saved the hotel from a major disaster, not for saving the hotel, but for the wee boy, and what a loss it would have been.

I was born at 23 Brandywell Avenue on the fourth of November 1949 at 6.10pm. The time of my birth probably relates to my love for tea.

My parents were William and Margaret Nelis, known to our neighbours as Big Bill and Maggie. My father was a shoemaker and had a repair shop on the Lecky Road. My mother was a full-time mother; I was the second youngest of thirteen children, seven of whom lived. My parents lost two sets of twins after they were each only a few months old; my sister Annie died during a small operation in hospital and Jim died after when he was just a few days old.

I had four brothers – Billy, Jim (II), Johnny and Harry, and two sisters, Margaret and Sadie.

As my siblings got older, my mother started working again in Tillie’s Factory, where she remained for years. I remember as a young child going down with my older brother Harry to my father’s shop with tea and sandwiches. He had a large grandfather clock behind the counter with no hands on the face. There was a sign on the clock, ‘No tick here’. It was a joke, of course, as the vast number of customers to the shop had two or three pairs of their children’s shoes being repaired at any given time. My father was a big football fan and was a member of the Derry & District League Committee. At night, after he came home from the shop and got a bite to eat, he would sit on the floor with a last and would repair any of the footballers’ boots who called to the house.

My brother Billy played for Derry City and Coleraine and Johnny played for Sligo Rovers. This was something which brought great pride to my father – and mother, as she was a big football fan also.

My mother’s father was James Taggart, union man. James was also a big football fan and, along with a couple of local men, built the Foyle Harps Hall on Hamilton Street. They formed a local youth football team, Foyle Harps, who went on to become the most successful junior team in the city, winning nine McAlinden Cup Finals, the Blue Riband trophy in the D&D.

My Granda James ran dances and a movie night to raise funds for the hall and the team. My mother sewed the first football rig.

My father was from Foster’s Terrace on the Lecky Road. My parents met at one of the dances in the Harps Hall, and two years later they were married. While my mother and father were engaged, my father had sat an exam for the Police Academy and received word that he had passed the exam. He went to Omagh for a fitness and medical test. A week later, he received a letter to report to the academy in Omagh, as he had been accepted.

That night, after work, he went up with a spring in his step to let my mother hear his news. He had not told my mother about his application, as no one he knew from his area had ever been successful before. He felt that, now he was getting married, this would ensure a better-paid job and a more stable future for them both.

He knocked on my Granda’s door, on Brandywell Road, and my mother appeared to see my father with a smiling face.

‘Maggie, I have been accepted into the Police Academy in Omagh. I am going to be a policeman.’

My mother just stared at him. ‘Come in, Bill,’ she said after a few seconds.

My father stepped into the living room where my Granda James was sitting by the fire smoking his pipe. My mother told Granda the news.

My Granda put down his pipe and sat in silence.

‘What is wrong, James?’ my father asked. ‘Are you not happy for us?’

My Granda got up and stood opposite my father – not face to face, as my Granda was about five foot nine and my father was six foot six.

‘Bill,’ he said, ‘there is no other fella in this town that I would pick to marry Maggie over you. Nobody. I have seen what some policemen have done in my time, and I don’t want a son-in-law who has anything to do with the police, and that’s my last word about it.’

My father turned to my mother and saw the distraught look on her face. He then turned back to James, who had sat down and lifted his pipe again. ‘Excuse us a minute, James,’ he said. And my mother and father went out to the front hall.

‘Just tell me, Maggie, what you want me to do – that’s all that matters to me.’

‘I just want us to get married and be happy, but I don’t want my father to resent you for this decision, Bill.’

‘That’s fine, Maggie, I love shoemaking anyway.’

They went back into Granda, and my father told him he was sticking to the shoe job. My father, being the honest man that he was, added, ‘Not because I felt I would have to give it up for fear of you, James. It’s my love for Maggie and my respect for your feelings, James.’

And so, they were married on the fourth of August 1929 in St Columba’s Church, Long Tower.

* ‘What Did You Do in the Bar, Daddy?’, by Joe Nelis, is published by Colmcille Press. It’s available from local booksellers and online.