Children were playing football in the street, women were waiting to pick up their ration of potatoes. All was calm and normal in Folkestone at 6pm on Friday, May 25, 1917.

But within half an hour the peace had been shattered.

German bombers attacked Folkestone and other towns in east Kent killing 97 people – the majority civilians just doing some shopping before the weekend.

A squadron of 23 Gotha bombers turned on Kent after their planned raid on London failed when they arrived and found heavy cloud cover over the capital. The raiders reached Folkestone shortly after 6pm and began dropping bombs in the west end.

It was the first raid carried out by aeroplanes in British history. Previous attacks had come from zeppelins which had started to be regularly shot down in late 1916.

People were killed in Shorncliffe Road, Manor Road and Foord Road before the final bomb fell on Tontine Street, with fatal consequences.

Queues of people were lined up outside the Stokes Brothers' greengrocers after a consignment of potatoes had arrived.

A commemorative event will be held tomorrow (Thursday) - exactly 100 years on - to remember all the victims for the first time as a new memorial is unveiled in Folkestone.

Some 80 or so relatives of victims are expected to attend the event which has been organised by historian Martin Easdown and Margaret Care, whose great grandfather Frederick Stokes was injured that day and died the following year from his injuries.

His brother, William, who ran the greengrocers, was killed along with his 14-year-old son, Arthur.

Miss Care will be attending the service she has helped organise after the idea of a formal commemoration came to her in 2014 at the centenary of the start of the war.

Mr Easdown has spent 20 years researching the events of that day 100 years ago and wrote a book in 2004 about the raid.

"They were just going about early Friday evening business and looking forward to the weekend, it was a nice spring day." Martin Easdown

Describing what the scene was like just before tragedy struck, he said: “People were queuing up, mainly women and quite a lot of young children. We have reports of children playing football, and people shopping in Gosnold’s which was a high class drapery shop.

“They were just going about early Friday evening business and looking forward to the weekend, it was a nice spring day.”

The attack came as a complete surprise despite it happening in the middle of the First World War.

People in Folkestone assumed the noises were from gun practice at the nearby Shorncliffe Camp between Folkestone and Sandgate.

Mr Easdown said: "Folkestone before that day had not been targeted which was a bit of a surprise as it was quite an important military town.

“Troops for the Western Front set off here and Folkestone also had military rest camps.

“Dover had been targeted, Margate and Ramsgate had quite regularly so it was a bit of a surprise Folkestone had been left alone.”

There was another reason for the surprise and shock for the town that day and the story dates back to 1878.

Mr Easdown explained: “The story was a German ship sank off Folkestone, called the Grosser Kurfurst, and Folkestone fishermen went out and rescued quite a few of the German sailors.

“In Cheriton Road Cemetery there is a big memorial to the German sailors. The local tradition was ‘oh, the Germans are leaving us because they are thanking us for all those years ago when we rescued their sailors’.

“The Germans were aiming, I think, for the railway line which is not far from here.

“Folkestone had no air raid warning or guns to defend itself.

“The home plane squadrons had gone to France.

“After the Zeppelins had been shot down there hadn’t been any action for a while and they thought perhaps that’s it and moved the squadrons to France.”

A commemorative event will be held in Folkestone Methodist Church in Sandgate Road at 5pm and afterwards in the Garden of Remembrance at 6.22pm – the exact time the bomb fell in Tontine Street – a new memorial will be revealed remembering every victim.

See today's Folkestone & Hythe Express for four pages of special reports, interviews and pictures.