大象传媒

This story was contributed at Tullie House, Carlisle and added to the site by a volunteer story gatherer.

I鈥檓 Jeston Staples from Soham. I now live in Fordham.
Well I can well remember the truck load of bombs blown up in Soham station on 4th June 1944.

When it happened the explosion swept me out of my bed or cot and took me up the wall up the side of the bedroom and then when the implosion came back I slipped down on the floor. I was stuck to the wall so long, I had time to think about it.
I could see when the truck load of bombs went up a big orange mushroom went up in the sky and then a few seconds after the two gasometers went one after the other. So we had a really big explosion in Soham.
It took all the eastside roofs off the houses and all the front windows out when the train load of bombs exploded pushed the windows into the rooms right across the rooms and then as the implosion come back pulled them back and they all rattled like a lot of tin cans.
The Train Drivers
Ben Gilbert and Jim Nightingale tried to unhook the truck load of bombs from the main train They pulled the WD engine and the truck load of twenty fivehundred pound bombs away from the main train which saved Soham.
They was trying to pull the truck load of bombs up to the Witton fields in the cutting where there were was a big cutting. Their idea was to get the truck load of bombs what was on fire unhook their engine and get away from it.
It did鈥檔t work out. It went up so quick before they could move away. It went up,right in the station.
Flattened the place
(How far away from the station were you)
Quarter of a mile, the next morning the whole of the streets in Soaham were littered with glass and window frames, doors all hanging out in the streets.

Several of the older people were injured, glass flying on to them as the windows come on to them in the beds. I remember the old people being cut about the faces.

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