We pile into the apartment block’s basement – Mutti, me, Oma and Opa. It’s somewhere that always fills me with terror – there’s no electric light. Some families are already there with candles. Children are screaming and being shouted at to shut up by the parents, or just being held and rocked and comforted. There are probably around twenty of us down there, including a mother and her baby. The woman’s perhaps only a couple of years older than I am, and – in the flickering candlelight – I see the fear in her eyes.

It’s not a proper air raid shelter, but then no one ever expected Dresden – with all its architecture, all its jewels and riches, all its culture – to actually be attacked. In one corner there’s a bathtub half-filled with water, and buckets of sand. Rudimentary, home-made attempts to get prepared.

One of the older men gets up and opens the basement door to look outside. He comes back, his voice quivering in terror, to say he’s seen ‘Christmas Trees’. I don’t understand at first – then Mutti explains. They’re the magnesium flares dropped by the vanguard of a bomber force to light up a target. I can imagine the scene, and it fills with me with horror – the whole city must be lit up as though there are tens of thousands of floodlights trained on it.

Mutti tries to reassure me. She says it’s probably only a reconnaissance mission – that they’re just taking photographs of the city. I don’t believe her.

Then the explosions start.

First, it’s a series of whistling sounds, then the booms.

Mutti urges us to lie on the floor, me underneath her, to try to protect me. She tries to get Opa to lie on top of Oma but they’re not interested. Perhaps they’re too old to do that. There are explosions followed by explosions. The whole ground shaking, the whole building shaking above us. At some point the candle on the table must be blown over, because we’re suddenly plunged into darkness, and that just makes things even more terrifying.

It feels like someone is hitting the back of my neck as each bomb drops, and the air pressure in the cellar changes.

It seems to go on for ever – bomb after bomb, explosion after explosion.

Eventually, the bombs stop falling, and the drone of the aircraft engines fades away.

There is stunned silence in the cellar. We gingerly get to our feet. All four of us seem to be none the worse for wear, but it is scorching hot and I’m struggling to breathe, as though all the air has been sucked from my body. The other three are panting and hyperventilating too and we realise we have to get out.