TOMORROW marks the 100th anniversary of the Southend air raid bombing by German planes during the First World War.

The terrible air raid happened just after 5pm and the attack claimed 32 lives and left 43 people injured.

Amongst the dead were ten men, 13 women and nine children. The aerial assault may have happened a century ago but one family still remembers the devastating impact of the attack.

Tim Huskisson, 55, is a professional musician from Salisbury Avenue, Westcliff. He told the Echo that his family members were killed in the raid.

He said: “My paternal grandfather’s sister, Edith Kate Battey, born Huskisson, was killed in the air raid along with her husband Walter Battey.

“Edith and the children took a week’s holiday in Southend as it’s a popular holiday resort. Walter joined them on Saturday, presumably having worked during the week. He was to take a train home on Sunday evening.”

But of course, they did not know the grisly fate that awaited them.

Mr Huskisson added: “On the evening of Sunday, August 12, the family were walking up Southend High Street towards the train station see Walter off, but as they approached the top of the high street, the bombing raid happened.

“Walter was killed instantly, and Edith was mortally wounded. She died in hospital on the morning of Tuesday, August 14.”

The Batteys’ deaths were reported in the the Finchley Press, and Muswell Hill Mercury & Highgate Post, on Friday August 17, 1917.

Edith’s parents lived in East Finchley and the photograph appearing in the newspaper (pictured above) was believed to have taken when the family were in Southend on that fateful weekend.

Edith’s parents received the photo on Friday - the last photograph of their daughter, who died at the age of 32. According to the Finchley Press, Walter was found with his arm was round his wife’s waist.

Their children, Elsie aged 11, Constance Mary aged seven, and John William aged five survived the bombing. The two younger children sustained serious wounds but Elsie remained unharmed as she leapt into a shop doorway for safety.

Surviving relatives looked after the orphans but John could not escape the horrors of warfare. Tim said: “John ended up in a mental asylum. He discharged himself at some point and was never heard of again. Even Elsie, whom I met in the Seventies when I was a little boy, did not know of his whereabouts.

“Nobody knew what happened to him afterwards.”

Henry “Harry” William John Huskisson, Tim’s grandfather, was another victim of the Great War. He was born in 1890 at Pemberton Terrace, Upper Holloway, Islington London.

Harry joined the East Surrey regiment on August 30, 1906 the day after his 16th birthday but lied to officers that he was 18.

He was stationed in Macedonia where British forces fought against the invading Bulgarian army. Huskisson senior was one of the 30,000 soldiers who contracted malaria and so he was evacuated out of Macedonia.

But unfortunately he suffered a mental breakdown from the hellish scenes of the conflict.

Mr Huskisson said: “My grandfather was sent back to England at one point due to shell shock. He’d been buried alive and suffered mental stress. He was also given appalling electric shock treatment.”

He was sent to Scotland to scrap moss under the Bridge of Allan for field hospitals who used it as a replacement for cotton. Fortunately Harry recovered despite the harsh medical treatment.

He recuperated in Maudsley Hospital, London, where he met Tim’s grandmother, May Daisy Binks whom he married in 1921.

Mr Huskisson added: “My grandmother had a hard life. Her first two husbands were killed in the war.”