Blitz babies

Survivors of the Coventry Blitz make their way through the wreckage of the city centre on November 15, 1940

- BY CHRIS MANBY and SIMON ROBINSON

November is a month for remembrance and this time of year has particular poignancy for Cynthia Smith.

It's her birthday month but Cynthia didn't celebrate her 87th year on Friday - because November 14 marks the anniversary of the infamous Coventry Blitz.

Between September 1940 and the following summer, the Nazis unleashed a bombing campaign on the UK like nothing ever seen before.

Over eight months, more than 43.000 civilians were killed and an estimated three million homes were destroyed as Hitler's Luftwaffe attempted to cripple Britain's industries and shatter civilian morale.

For the children who lived through The Blitz, these were days that would shape the rest of their lives.

Now in their eighties and nineties, members of this "Silent Generation" still remember the sights, sounds and even the smells that defined their wartime childhoods.

In Coventry, Cynthia had just blown out the candles on her second birthday cake when the air-raid sirens began to wail.

Ordinarily, her mum Minnie would have taken Cynthia and her sister Christine to wait out the attack in the cupboard beneath the stairs. But guided by some divine providence that night, the little family bedded down in the communal shelter across the road.