BRAVERY OF THE BLITZ BABIES

As witnesses to death and devastation on the Home Front, children of the Second World War learned to grow up fast. Eighty-five years on, some of those remaining share their incredible stories of stoicism and survival in a new book

- BY CHRIS MANBY and SIMON ROBINSON

NOVEMBER is always a month for remembrance but this time of year has particular poignance for Cynthia Smith. It's her birthday month but Cynthia didn't celebrate her 87th year yesterday because November 14 marks the anniversary of the infamous Coventry Blitz.

Between September 1940 and the summer of 1941, the German air force unleashed a bombing campaign like nothing ever seen before. Over eight months, more than 43,000 civilians lost their lives and an estimated three million homes were destroyed as Hitler's Luftwaffe attempted to cripple Britain’s industries and shatter civilian morale.

Though London bore the brunt, cities and towns up and down the country, from Plymouth to Glasgow, also suffered devastation. For the children who lived through the Blitz as it came to be known, 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 sirens began to wail.

Ordinarily, her mum Minnie would have taken Cynthia and her sister Christine to wait out the air-raid 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.

The air-raid, which the Germans had codenamed ‘Moonlight Sonata’, continued all night long. More than 500 bombers crossed the city, first from north to south, then from east to west, targeting not only Coventry's valuable factories, but her residential streets and historic city centre too.

When Minnie carried her daughters out of the shelter the following morning, it was also a scene of utter devastation.