It is 28 October 1944 around 2.30 pm when two aircraft from 175 Squadron make an attack on Ruijtenberg's shipyard. At that moment, two German tracked vehicles, so-called Sturmgeschütze, are standing in Benedenkerkstraat. The first vehicle is towing the second one whose track is damaged. The first vehicle is under a plane tree near Dr Wijffels' house, the second under the lime trees near the Timmers family's former farm. The two fighters also spot the enemy vehicles and launch an attack from the south. At that moment, the Wijffels family flees with some others into the basement. The entrance to the cellar is closed with a wooden hatch topped by an iron plate. Via a pulley, everything can be opened from the inside.

When the attack is over, the people inside hear pounding on the hatch and a German shouts, ‘Raus kommen, das Haus an die Überseite brennt. ’ (‘Come out. The house across the road is burning.’)There is indeed a fire but it involves a wood store and also one of the tracked vehicles. The men begin extinguishing the wood store. The German soldier, however, insists that the fire of his tracked vehicle be extinguished first because, he explains, the vehicle is full of ammunition in the form of shells. ‘Wenn das los geht finden Sie keine Hauser zurück, nur ein riesigen Loch’. (‘When that explodes you instead of your houses you will find just one huge crater.’) With everybody helping out the fire in the tracked vehicle was extinguished and a tragedy is avoided. The vehicles then leave for the Lambertus Church in Raamsdonk to reinforce ‘Brückenkopf Keizersveer’.The drag trail of the blocked drive wheel of the faulty vehicle can still be seen in surface of Benedenkerkstraat for years to come.