War Babies

A collection of interviews with men and women from the Silent Generation - those born between 1928 and 1945 - about their childhood experiences during World War Two

"Those men and women who donned uniforms to 'do their bit' were not the only ones affected by a conflict that turned the world upside down. Many millions of children also lived through the war."

Each November we remember the sacrifice and courage of the soldiers, sailors and airmen who fought in two world wars. Sadly, as each year passes, only a handful of veterans survive to tell their stories, and those of their comrades who paid the ultimate price.

But there's another group of women and men, themselves now elderly, who also survived a war. They may not have borne arms, or worn a uniform, but they too faced war's horrors - as children - and they bear its scars. They may not be war veterans but they are war's victims and survivors.

Author Chris Manby and social historian Simon Robinson finally give a voice to those children, and tell some of the very few untold stories of World War Two. Tales of hardship, danger, brutality and terror.

"Alongside their parents and grandparents, they too faced the blitzes, lived on rations and were, in many terrible cases, imprisoned, subjected to torture and used as slave labour. Though the children of World War Two were too young to serve they were not too young to suffer."

Moving, compelling, tragic and uplifting, it is also a story of our times as the authors say...

"A new generation of children is spending nights in bomb shelters, becoming refugees and losing their loved ones. Perhaps listening to the voices of those who were children during World War Two, and examining how their lives developed in the decades that followed, can help us to better understand how to support this new band of war babies in the years to come. It's time for the Silent Generation's stories to be heard."