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ANTHONY WILLIAM CASSON

It was spring 1943 and I was 19. I was living at the family house in Fortismere Avenue in Muswell Hill, North London. Mick my younger brother was also there as was Nana, our housekeeper. My father was up in Falkirk, Scotland managing an Italian restaurant. I think at the time I was working for British Drug Houses doing general clerical work in central London.

This particular night I was in bed fast asleep. I woke up suddenly to find the ceiling coming down on top of me and I knew instantly that a bomb had fallen. Because the bomb was dropped by parachute there had been no noise. There may have been air raid sirens that night, I don’t quite remember, but if so we ignored them. Earlier on in the war when the sirens sounded we used the cellar but they went off so frequently we soon got tired of this. The ceiling had disintegrated into bits, the roof of the house had come off but to my amazement several windows were still intact.

The next morning when I went out I could see that the whole of the road and pavements were covered in mud and clay. All of the plane trees lining the street were badly scarred. The bomb had exploded in one of the back gardens of the house opposite but although badly damaged the house was still standing. We were invited to view the crater but the two sisters who lived in the house, Margery and Olive Eastwood. The whole of the back garden was a crater and it must have been about 120ft across. This was the biggest crater that I seen — larger than the ones I was used to seeing everyday in the city.

We were given part of the parachute by the police. It was silk, pale blue silk.

I came to the conclusion that we’d been very lucky that the bomb had landed in the gardens and so no one had been injured or killed. Being young I must admit that it didn’t effect me much at the time — I still slept soundly at night

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