A Day to remember

November 11th 1940 The following account was written by Mr Graham Johnson and it was his son, Kevin, who brought these memoirs to our attention – events which rocked Wisbech eighty years ago this month.“The last bomb dropped on the home of Mr and Mrs South and with great regret Mrs South died and was a victim of the bombing. Also two young girls Marlene and Margaret who were out on the road ran towards Marlene’s house but unfortunately Margaret was blinded in one eye (so I was told later). It was a typical November day, low cloud and foggy in places. At about 3.30pm it all changed. I cannot say with a bang because we did not hear or feel anything except glass and crockery breaking all around us. My dad had just come home from work. As he came in, he said he thought it was a Blenheim aeroplane, but I said I thought it was a German as it sounded different and I was soon proved right. I did catch a quick glimpse as it was flying over the River Nene towards Wisbech Bridge. He must have turned round following his track back to the warehouse called Ropkins on the edge of English Brothers timber yard where my dad had just walked home from (as we lived at 26 Albany Road).[A bomb] hit that on the end and the rest fell in a line across Chase Street and then our road, one in the coal yard at the end of Albany Terrace, then another one in the middle of the road in front of our house with the blast taking Mr and Mrs Boar’s house flat and took out of our house every pane of glass. I was in the dining room by the window, but all the glass went outwards from where I was standing. The blast came from the front of the house, so the back windows went outside but the front windows shattered into the rooms, completely destroying a leather three-piece-suite and other accessories in the room. My mother went to the pantry under the stairs thinking it a good place to shelter she thought, but on opening the door found everything broken in a heap on the floor but the cup handles were still on the hooks.” The memoir moves on to more general matters and has been included here, in the precise form in which it was written: “These six semi detached houses at the bottom of the road were built 1929-1931. They had flush toilets all be it they were all out side, all Gas (no electricity) but on main sewer built by Langford the builders. Mortgage with Halifax paid weekly to Old Bell sale room Hill Street gate way in the joining passage 13 shillings and 6 pence per week for a brand new house which was a lot of money in them days, my mother worked at British Basket factory North End Wisbech which wasn’t highly paid job but it helped to pay mortgage.”