大象传媒

This story is submitted by The British Schools Museum on behalf of Mrs June Cassin, and with her permission.

During the first weekend of the blitz we were bombed out of our family home which was situated in the East India Dock Road, Poplar, East London. The family, consisting of parents, sister, two young uncles and myself, survived thanks to the Anderson shelter in the garden in which we had more or less spent the previous three days. In the early hours of the fourth day we had to evacuate to a brick-built street shelter, as the house, although not suffering a direct hit, was made uninhabitable by blast. The front door was demolished, the staircase collapsed and also there was an unexploded bomb in the road directly in front of the house.

Being then homeless we had to move to my grandmother's house a few miles away. As there were quite a number of relatives also living there, we had to use her neighbour`s shelter as well. With the adults working varying hours, carrying out their duties as fire wardens etc., we managed.

After we鈥檇 lived there for about six weeks my father came home from work one Friday evening and told my mother to pack some clothes for us all. His employers were sending him to Nash Mills in Hertfordshire to open an emergency wartime branch in case they were bombed out of London.

The following morning a party of nineteen people, ourselves, the younger of my two uncles, and employees of various sexes and ages, made the journey by bus, tube and train to the unknown (to us) regions of Hertfordshire. What a spectacle we must have been but by then the people of London were used to many sights, most of them horrific.

On arriving at the paper-mill, part of which was to be the new workplace for the party, my father was given a list of names and addresses of local people who were willing to offer homes to us. We were then deposited into the back room of a local pub where we were provided with tea and sandwiches whilst my father and another man from our group went off knocking at doors. They had no transport and no knowledge of the area but throughout the day they had housed each member of the party. By nine-thirty that night only our family were left. My uncle who was then seventeen was taken in by a family. It was obviously very difficult for a family of four to be accommodated. However, the people in the neighbouring house to where my uncle had been placed took pity on us and so our long day ended with a very kind family squeezing us in their home.

Our host family consisted of mother, father, grandmother and three teenaged daughters. The four of us were given the largest bedroom with one double and one single bed. As our family linen was lost in the bombing there was only enough bedding for one bed so until my mother was able to get dockets from Watford Town hall in order to buy new linen we four had to top to tail in the one bed. When the linen had been purchased we had the luxury of two beds with my sister and I sharing the single bed.
The winter of 1940/1941 was very cold with a lot of snow and my sister and myself had to walk every day to the Church Hall in Apsley where we had temporary education. I don't remember that we actually had any lessons; we were more or less kept occupied and taken care of. The walk was about two miles over allotments and across the canal. We used to take a jam sandwich and a halfpenny for a cup of cocoa for our lunch. There was very little to buy in the shops and of course we had to give our ration books to the lady of the house who catered for us.

On a Saturday we would go to the cinema in Hemel Hempstead for something to do and to give our host family some space. Afterwards we would go to a cafe where usually the only meal on offer would be beans on toast and very occasionally eggs.

We lived like this for six months until my father found us a house in King's Langley - a house that rose out of the canal and abutted the Ovaltine factory. We were then able to resume our education. We had nine very happy years in King's Langley during which time we had another sister. We were then moved on again with my father鈥檚 employment to Temple, a hamlet two miles along the Thames from Marlow.

We lost touch with the very kind family who sacrificed their own comfort to house us. If any of them come across my story we would like to say a big 'Thank you'.

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