Date of Birth: 15th July 1921

Place of Birth: The Millhouse, Garryadden, Blackwater, Co. Wexford

Date Interviewed: 21st April 2010

Summary: Joe Ward starts with details of his family. His grandfather Jack Ward was “a castrater, countryman”; his grandmother a Dempsey of Blackwater. Jack joined the army in 1939 and spent five years stationed at the Curragh. He reveals the little-known fact that British bombers who ran out of fuel would land at the Curragh to be refuelled and sent on their way again! He talks of the routines of army life and of the POWs they guarded. When he was demobbed at the end of the war he went to Belfast to join the RAF but failed the medical. Joe worked at various jobs – from turf-cutting for Bord na Mona, constructing a hydroelectric scheme in Ballyshannon, to building a housing development in Kildare. Back in Wexford Joe met his wife Teresa at a dance in Curracloe.