Firefighters in the Second World War were as crucial to victory as the army - and they ran the same sort of risks.

Sixteen thousand were killed and 180,000 injured. The rest never forgot the dreadful things they saw: "Once you've pulled a dead child out of a burning building, you never forget it", said one of them.

This is their story, from the Blitz in 1940 to the doodlebugs in 1944.

It is also the story of how the modern fire service was created, under the pressure of a new sort of war, and of how the firefighters' own trade union made it work.