The Blitz was Nazi Germany's sustained aerial bombing campaign against Britain in World War Two. The raids killed 43,000 civilians and lasted for eight months, petering out when Hitler began to focus on his plans for Russian invasion in May 1941. Photo: People in Coventry walk to work past smouldering piles of rubble after a bombing raid in 1940. (Getty Images)

London, 1941

Blitz landscape     Westminster City Archives

I run up and down Baker Street. There are fires all around me. I can't see through the smoke. I turn into George Street, and there he is. He's with another man, running toward a smoldering heap of rubble that moments ago was a house.

The sky is streaked with reddish-gold specks. Large grey flakes, high up above the fire, dance, twirl, twist, and sail down slowly, vanishing as they touch the ground. The flames are greedy beasts, beautiful and wild. The crackling and hissing makes them vicious.

Ambulances and first-aid vans start to arrive. Doctors, soldiers, and civilians try to help. Cups of tea appear. A baby lies on the pavement, crying. I run to him. His mother is digging and digging in the rubble. To find the father? Blood and dirt on her hands, tears running down her grimy face. Her hair sticks to her cheeks. She won't let me pick up the baby. A young man climbs out of a window, hangs on to the sill as the wall of a neighbouring house collapses. Buildings cave in, as if crushed by a giant foot. Clouds of dust and smoke burst into the air.

Walter is digging in the rubble, looking for people who are trapped. A tall young girl stands in the middle of the road, paralyzed. I grip her arm, try to move her, but it is as though she is riveted to the road. I try to persuade her to come with me, but she can't hear me, and her eyes don't see me. I stroke her dusty, blond hair. Tears fall down her frozen face. "Mother", she whispers. Has she seen her mother, trapped, pinned under wreckage, dead?

Eventually she moves, and I lead her along the burning street to the church door. I ask the man in the blue jacket to take her down to the shelter.

I run back along George Street. Walter is still digging. In Baker Street, people lie buried under beams and floorboards. A hand sticks out of the rubble, the top of someone's head. I'm going to be sick. A boy lies pinned under part of a roof. He is in agony; he tries to smile. An old woman, grateful for a mug of tea, jokes about the missing sugar.

The bombers are coming back. I rush back to the church and go down into the shelter to see if my parents are all right. It is packed. Mother struggles through the crowd toward me. She is crying.

"I was so worried. Why have you been so long?" She flings her arms around me. "Where's Walter? What a terrible raid. Just look at all these people." Father, tears in his eyes, grips my hand.

Walter joins us, his face and clothes black with grime. His left hand is bandaged -- he tried to pick up some metal rods that were too hot to handle. I stroke his hair.

"It was terrible, darling. Terrible" Walter says. He gropes for my hand. I am proud of him.

More and more people crowd into the shelter. Some have to sit on the flagstone floor. They are dressed in their nightclothes. There is a huge unexploded bomb in Portman Square. We don't know if our houses will still be there when we go outside. If we go outside. We are safe only from blast -- not from a direct hit.

A huge man with ginger hair is standing in front of my father, poking a thick finger in his chest. "Bloody enemy aliens! You have no right to be in here -- your planes are killing our people. Go home!"

Walter leaps at him. The man shakes him off easily and knees him in the stomach. Walter punches him in the face. Mother covers her eyes. Father has gone white.

The shelter marshal, a slim young priest, shouts, "Stop this at once! These people have every right to be here."

The man carries on shouting: "We need their places. Bloody traitors!"

"Look at him", says the priest, pointing at Walter with his bandaged hand. "He's bleeding. He's exhausted from trying to rescue people. You -- what have you done to help?" He pushes the man into another room.

From: Some Girls, Some Hats and Hitler, Trudi Kanter, Scribner, c.1984