Churchill called them 'heroes with grimy faces' - their bravery must never be forgotten

More than 1,000 frontline firefighters would lose their lives while on duty during the Second World War. A vital part of Britain's defence, they were, according to Winston Churchill, "a grand lot", the "heroes with grimy faces". The wartime PM went on to add that "their work must never be forgotten".

Such accolades, however, were not initially at the forefront of the public's perception of fire brigades or those who volunteered to serve in them. Ridiculed as 'shirkers' or 'Army dodgers', or even cowards, by a British public yet to experience the horror of Luftwaffe bombing attacks, firefighters during the early period of the war were initially given a hard time.

To make matters worse, a firefighter was paid significantly more than a regular private soldier in the Army. It rubbed salt into the perceived wounds. For the most part, the civilian population could see little purpose in a greatly expanded fire service.

That expansion, during the Munich crisis of 1938, also saw the formation of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS). Later, on August 18, 1941, the disparate fire brigades across the country, alongside the AFS, were formed into a new unified fire authority, The National Fire Service (NFS).

By the outbreak of war on September 3, 1939, when vast swathes of the male population were called up for military service, some 23,000 auxiliary firemen had already been mobilised to supplement the 2,700 regular London Fire Brigade personnel. Later, an astonishing 70,000 citizens (men and women) would volunteer for fire service duty across the nation.

But any perception of Britain's firefighters being nothing more than draft-dodging shirkers would evaporate on September 7, 1940. That day the Luftwaffe launched direct round-the-clock attacks on London as the Battle of Britain morphed into the Blitz with air raids moving away from military and industrial targets to target the capital instead.

In that first attack, the courageous personnel of the London Fire Brigade, and of the AFS, those "shirkers and Army dodgers", fought to control and contain what were devastating firestorms engulfing the docklands and parts of London's East End.

A near hopeless task, the battling firefighters almost certainly reduced the impact of that terrible onslaught, to a degree at least. More lives than the 430 who perished across that first terrible day and night would certainly have been lost were it not for the bravery and tenacity of London's firefighters. Suddenly, these were no overpaid draft dodgers but very much those heroes with grimy faces that Churchill later described.

Amongst the carnage of that first attack, however, they had lost seven of their own - the first of the 327 firefighters killed during the London Blitz, an assault lasting from September 1940 until May 1941. That many of Britain's firefighters of the Second World War performed astonishing feats of courage is without question.

We will never know how many died while undertaking extraordinary acts of bravery, their stories dying with them as they perished in the sheer hell of smoke, flame, rubble and exploding bombs. There are, though, some exceptional stories of singular bravery by the firefighters of London's Blitz.

Harry Errington was serving as an auxiliary fireman at Soho when, on September 17, 1940, his fire station on Shaftesbury Avenue took a devastating direct hit. The demolished building collapsed into the cellar where he and other fire fighters were sheltering. Twenty people, including six firemen, were killed outright and Harry himself was left unconscious.

When he came to, Harry found the cellar engulfed in flames and he could hear cries for help. Rescuing a trapped colleague, he managed to struggle up a stone staircase and get them both to safety. Meanwhile, the fire had taken further hold but Harry descended again into the blazing cellar and, despite badly burned hands, he carried another man to safety.

For his bravery, this 30-year-old son of Polish-Jewish immigrants became the only London firefighter to be decorated with the George Cross during the war.

Although they were not then employed to fight fires, firewomen served in vital support roles including control room staff (as telephonists and messengers), drivers and dispatch riders. As such, they were often just as exposed to aerial bombardment as the men fighting the fires. In total, 25 firewomen were killed during the war and others were commended for bravery. One astounding tale of pluck and selfless determination, though, involved auxiliary firewoman Gillian Tanner.

Driving to London on September 3, 1939, 21-year-old Gillian immediately offered her services. For the day, she had an unusual skill set for a woman: she held a lorry driver's licence. What she did at the height of the Blitz was set out in the stark official language of the citation for an award of the George Medal for her actions on September 20, 1940, when driving a lorry from Bermondsey.

"Six serious fires were in progress and for three hours Auxiliary Tanner drove a 30cwt lorry loaded with 150 gallons of petrol in cans from fire to fire replenishing petrol supplies, despite intense bombing at the time," it explained. "She showed remarkable coolness and courage throughout."

In many instances, firefighters across the country lost their lives in bombing attacks rather than while fighting fires.

A case in point was an incident which saw the worst single loss of life in Britain's fire service history when, on April 19, 1941, a bomb hit Old Palace School, Bow, then in use as an AFSsub-station. In the attack, 34 firefighters died: 13 from London and 21 from Beckenhamin Kent. Included in the toll were two firewomen, Hilda Dupree and Winifred Peters. Although the pace of attacks diminished after May 1941, there was still danger aplenty.

In June 1944, artist and fireman Wilfred Haines painted a scene of a V1 Flying Bomb, bracketed by searchlights and anti-aircraft fire, after he watched it thunder across the Thames.

That painting is now in the Imperial War Museum, a large ugly gash slashing across its fabric. It is damage caused when another V1 Flying Bomb landed directly on William's Union Street post on June 19, 1944, killing him.

He was among the last of the 1,027 firefighters who died in service during the Second World War; 997 of those were killed across Britain during the Blitz alone. It was a terrible toll. Very likely, it was a toll many are simply unaware of when they watch a senior member of the emergency services lay their wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.

Eighty-five years on from the Blitz, Britain's firefighters continue to uphold and maintain the finest traditions of courage and fortitude, a tradition that one could argue was forged and tempered in its ultimate test: the unimaginable wartime hell and fury of firestorms and collapsing buildings. Today on November 11, when "the bells go down" at London's Soho Fire Station, its firefighters literally follow in the revered footsteps and traditions of Harry Errington - remembered and honoured at the station to this day.

Since those grim wartime years, Soho Fire Station, one of the busiest in London, has seen its share of other dark days. In 1987, for instance, at the disastrous King's Cross Underground fire, Soho's Station Officer, Colin Townsley, died while trying to rescue a passenger. Found near a woman he was trying to save, the official inquiry described his actions as heroic.

More recently, crews from Soho were involved at Grenfell, going into the towering inferno to rescue those trapped in London's biggest blaze since the Blitz. As at King's Cross, and so at Grenfell, the fire brigade's finest traditions and values of those who went before them in wartime service were proudly upheld.

The same may be said for every fire station and every firefighter, not only across London but across the land.

In May 1991, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, unveiled a memorial to those firefighters of London who lost their lives during the Second World War. Depicting a bronze of firefighters in action, it stands in the shadow of St Paul's Cathedral, a building symbolic of London's wartime ordeal by fire.

The memorial is certainly a fine one, but in reality, the firefighters' true memorial stands in the wider expanse of today's London; a city that this truly valiant band of men and women fought to save from much wider destruction at a terrible cost.

They were "a grand lot". And we will remember them.