Although last Sunday’s Remembrance Day Service in Salisbury had to be a scaled down event, a good number of people paid their respects at the Guildhall Square. A newspaper cutting from The Salisbury Times recalls this interesting wartime article from August 1942:

The day the Luftwaffe declared war on Fisherton Street, Salisbury, will always be remembered by Eve Chant. She was dragged off the pavement into a butchers shop as a German plane machine-gunned the street, shattering the windows of Bath Brothers, the greengrocers.

Mrs Chant was nine months pregnant and on her way back to her mother-in-law’s flat when the plane first went over. “I wasn’t frightened,” she reported. “I was just amazed. I thought my God it’s a German - its not one of ours.”As she crossed the bridge near the County Hotel two soldiers, worried for her safety, pulled her down into the gents lavatory to shelter. She escaped from this undignified position as soon as the plane had passed, but as she was hurrying along Fisherton Street it suddenly re-appeared flying in the opposite direction. “It dropped some bombs over by the gas works,” she said. “They looked like cigars”.

Two more soldiers pulled her to the floor against the wall of the infirmary. Concerned her mother-in-law would be worried, Mrs Chant walked on. As she was passing Price’s butchers opposite Waters Lane, a man rushed out and pulled her indoors just before bullets came flying down the street, shattering the windows of Bath Brothers.

Other people were less lucky that day. The Journal, reporting the story under the headline ‘Hit and Run Raid – South Town Bombed Again’ reported ten people had been injured.

Because of wartime censorship the paper did not reveal exactly where the bombs fell.