Blitz survivor recounts childhood memories of war

A survivor of the Blitz recalls how her mother showed her not to be afraid in a new documentary marking the 85th anniversary of the end of the Blitz.

Gill Kirkham, from Coventry, has taken part in Children of the Blitz, a film bringing together the testimonies of some of the last surviving witnesses of the bombings.

The documentary explores the lives of some of the children who were not evacuated during the war and their perspectives of wartime Britain.

"Mum was an extraordinary woman. She would put me to bed and then she would sit with me," Kirkham, 86, said, "I'd heard all these bumps, which were the bombs of course. But she never gave me any idea that she might be frightened at all."

While the Blitz is most commonly associated with London, the film looks at the other 70 towns and cities targeted - featuring accounts from Liverpool, Sheffield, Hull, Belfast, Cardiff and Coventry.

During the war, the government's Operation Pied Piper set out to evacuate millions of children - but only 800,000 were able to leave towns and cities vulnerable to attack.

Children of the Blitz focuses of some of the two million children who stayed at home, through first-hand testimony and rarely seen archive footage.

Describing the city before the attack, Kirkham said: "Coventry was a lovely old medieval city, it was a very close knit community.

"Nobody locked their doors. I'd never even heard of television."

On 14 November 1940, Coventry suffered the most concentrated attack on any British city during World War Two.

More than half of the city's homes, about 43,000 properties, were damaged, and the medieval church of St Michael's was destroyed, making it the only English cathedral lost to enemy action during the war.

Kirkham said the first time her mum revealed the bumps she had been hearing were something more sinister, was when a neighbour's house was hit in the attack.

She said: "There was a house on the corner with a low brick wall. In the garden they had a chicken run and I used to love going and looking at the baby chicks.

"One morning I went to see the baby chicks and there was a pile of rubble. I stood staring at this pile of rubble and I said to my mum 'where are the baby chicks?'

"She didn't pull any punches, she said 'they're dead love, they're under the rubble'.

"It didn't occur to me until years later that people lived in that house, they must have died."

Almost 500 Luftwaffe bombers took part in the raid, dropping 500 tonnes of high explosives, around 30,000 incendiaries and 50 landmines.

A total of 554 people were killed, with many more unaccounted for.

Children of the Blitz will air on BBC Two at 21:00 BST on Monday and is available on BBC iPlayer.

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