As Remembrance Day approaches Hitchin Nub News takes a look at war stories relating to our town through our Rewind articles.

Remembrance Day, or Armistice Day as it is sometimes knowns as, always falls on November 11.

It is also commemorated on the second Sunday of each November, aka Remembrance Sunday, with many assembling at our town's cenotaph next to St Mary's Church in the town centre.

For 2021, Remembrance Sunday falls on November 14.

Nub News will be running a few pieces on the event and will be present at the memorial itself. If you have anything you would like to share with us please do get in touch.

In the meantime, read the latest in our Rewind series, on the fateful evening the Nazi's bombed Hitchin.

............

Have you ever wondered why numbers 61, 63, and 65 are missing from Orchard Road in the Walsworth area of Hitchin?

Or why three houses on that road are different in style to the rest?

The answers relate to a fateful date in our town's history: August 12, 1941.

On that terrible day, the Nazi war machine inflicted Hitchin's only death due to an air raid by the Luftwaffe, during the whole of the Second World War.

During a raid in the early years of the war, as Britain battled alone against Adolf Hitler, his henchmen and the German war machine, bombers had targeted Hitchin's railway station, believing it to be an important site on tracks leading to North London and Kings Cross.

However, for reasons unknown, but most likely because the bombs were released a fraction too late, killer ordnance meant for the station next to Walsworth Road ended up on Orchard Road half a mile away.

A pair of houses were completely and utterly flattened. The effect of the blast killed Miriam Sims, aged 23.

Mrs Sims was married to Cpl J Sims of the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, and a daughter of Mr and Mrs Pepper.

Despite the tragic fatality, our town refused to be bowed, and continued with our war effort under Prime Minister Winston Churchill, that ultimately helped to defeat Nazism.

The Home Guard built a communal air raid shelter under Market Place, while giant water tanks were constructed at the corner of Queen Street and Windmill Hill.

Trenches were also dug in the Priory and a redoubt was built near to the railway line on Woolgrove Road.

If you look hard enough you can still see the brick built shelter hidden in undergrowth next to Redoubt Close, which is named after the small building.

Towards the end of the Second World War, in September 1944, Nazi bombs also landed near the railway line by Wilbury Bridge, along with reports of the deadly V1 flying bombs nicknamed doodlebugs landing in nearby Pirton.

RELATED ARTICLES

We Will Remember Them: The story of Hitchin's Frank Young VC

The Hitchin Riots - A Very Middle Class Affair