I clearly remember coming downstairs on many mornings to find strangers (adults and children) sleeping all over our wee house in Railway Street Banbridge. There wasn't room to put your foot down to walk between the sleeping bodies. On the previous nights I can also remember the big bombers flying overhead and very low in the sky to Belfast and then the night sky being lit up with the exploding bombs. I was about 5 or 6 at the time. So that would have been circa 1943. People would alight from the trains in the railway station and everybody in the street (which was just beside the railway station) would take in as many people as they could. They were all strangers but they were homeless with nowhere to sleep. Everybody helped in whatever way they could. Kind Regards. Jean McCarthy nee Moore On 27/01/2008, Alison Aldersea <aesredla@hotmail.com> wrote: > It has been interesting to read some of the posts concerning the evacuees in WW2 as my mum had just been telling me about her experiences. She was around 6 at the time of the Belfast blitz and recalls going into the hills to hide in the ditches on a number of occasions. More relevant to Co Down though, she was billeted to a number of houses around Portadown-sometimes with her family, but at least once to a house on her own. These billets weren't family or friends, so there must have been some central organisation. At one point the family were evacuated to the Slieve Donard hotel in Newcastle .Alison AlderseaAustralia > _________________________________________________________________ > Your Future Starts Here. Dream it? Then be it! Find it at www.seek.com.au > http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Fninemsn%2Eseek%2Ecom%2Eau%2F%3Ftracking%3Dsk%3Ahet%3Ask%3Anine%3A0%3Ahot%3Atext&_t=764565661&_r=OCT07_endtext_Future&_m=EXT > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to NIR-DOWN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message > -- http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jeanmccarthy36/ jeanmccarthy36@googlemail.com