ANGRY PEOPLE OF PLYMOUTH

Southland Times, Issue 24439, 20 May 1941, Page 3

ANGRY PEOPLE OF PLYMOUTH

Authorities’ Lack Of Planning

LONDON, May 1.

Lack of planning and imagination has increased the sufferings of hundreds of Plymouth residents after the fifth bombing in nine nights ot Britain’s “worst blitzed town. Thousands of citizens are angered because, while the city is being blown I to bits, children are kept in the danger zone. Some of them have no schools to attend. The local authorities blame the Ministry of Health for not having made Plymouth an evacuation area months ago, instead of only yesterday. The Ministry of Information yesterday rushed vans to villages many miles from Plymouth, broadcasting appeals to the residents to clear what rooms they could and prepare to take in bombed out women and children. SLEPT UNDER HEDGES Last night, some citizens even slept under hedges rather than face the bombing again. Buses and other vehicles, crammed with people, bedding, and household goods, went from Plymouth yesterday. Large crowds jostled at the bus stations, and extra buses were provided to take those left behind. Some busloads were dropped at villages, and the buses returned for other evacuees. Women and children with suitcases and bags waited at the roadside while crowded buses passed, unable to pick them up. The authorities face a double prob- ; lem now —billeting the homeless and . finding homes for the school children, I evacuation of whom will begin in a i few days. ' Mr Ritchie Calder, of The Daily I Herald, who has visited more “blitzed”

towns than any other Press representative, reported yesterday: “Never have I been moved to such anger at official ineffectiveness as I have been at Plymouth. One of the worst features is that many of the women and children whom I have seen are the families of men serving overseas. Worse still, many of the women are widows of men who lost their lives in this war.

I j WOMAN’S TERRIBLE ORDEAL | “One of the most pathetic stories in all my blitz wanderings was told to me by Mrs Ann Cassidy, a 24-year-old Scot. I found her clutching her six-weeks-old baby. The mother’s hands were bandaged, for she had burned them in putting out incendiary bombs to save the baby. She is the widow of a naval man, who never saw his child. “Mrs Cassidy’s mother shared all the horrors of the bombardment with her, but otherwise she has no relations. With her mother and the baby, she was trapped in a cellar for four hours after her home was bombed. The hospital where they were taken was set on fire within half an hour, and they had to be rescued again. “Mrs Cassidy went to her home and tried to collect a few belongings, but an unexploded bomb went off, knocking her unconscious. She was trapped once more in a burning building two nights ago, and had to put out the incendiary bombs herself. “I asked her what she was going to do, and she replied: ‘I shall just go on waiting. I have nowhere to go, but I want to go to the country with my baby.’ ” Mr Calder says that there has been too much red tape and shifting of re- 1 sponsibility, aggravating human misery unnecessarily. The State, he contends, ought to stand as guardian in the place I of absent husbands.

“Instead,” he says, “I have found bickering, buck-passing, and the same old lack of human understanding. I say to the Ministries: ‘Look into what is happening at Plymouth.’ ”