'We should still remember' victims of 1945 blast

A researcher says it is "only right" there is now a memorial to the US servicemen who died at a Kent railway station in 1945.

An exploding petrol tanker killed four American soldiers at Walmer station's goods shed on 12 September 1945.

A plaque was installed at the station in 2021 remembering the men.

"They might not have died in combat we should still remember them no matter how they die because they still died in service," local historian Phil Eyden told Secret Kent.

"They still died thousands of miles away from home in a horrible incident that really shouldn't have happened."

A Walmer resident who was "a young lad" at the time told Eyden he had heard a lit cigarette meeting the petrol vapour around the goods shed had caused the explosion, he said.

The explosion also injured between 12 and 15 other people.

Firefighters manage" to get the fire under control after a couple of hours and towed other petrol tank wagons to safety, Eyden said.

According to the local historian, another resident who was eight at the time had described "flames and great clouds of black smoke" billowing from a storage tank.

"As we walked past the big houses towards the railway, men in uniform were running in and out of them," the resident had said.

The wounded men were taken to the Royal Marines barracks in neighbouring Deal and a memorial service was held for the dead servicemen "with a spiritual choir singing spiritual gospel music" in the following days, according to Eyden.

He said he had "real trouble trying to find out who was actually killed" but eventually narrowed it down from a list provided by US officials of all US personnel that died on that day.

"They didn't really have a legacy that's easy to look up but nonetheless we got there in the end," Eyden said.

The researcher successfully contacted the niece of one of the men, who lives in New York, but has been unable to contact relatives of the others.

The petrol that exploded in the incident had been retrieved following a separate fire at sea earlier that year.

A US transport vessel, the James Harrod, had collided with another, anchored ship while transporting armaments to Belgium and caught fire, according to Eyden.

Four people died in that incident, off the coast of Kent, and the damaged ship was towed to Kingsdown, just south of Walmer.

The wreck later broke its moorings in a storm and became grounded near Deal.

"The residents of Deal looked out and they saw like a smoking Liberty ship, just half a mile offshore, so it was decided to offload it," said Eyden.

That August, a US unit was brought in to spend weeks "going backwards and forwards" transporting the petrol cans and ammunition to safety.

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