For many people Valentine’s Day is celebrated with a bunch of red roses from a loved one.

But for 79-year-old Karin Churchill, it is an event that will always mark the anniversary of one of the darkest days of her life — the bombing of the German city of Dresden.

She was then a 14-year-old schoolgirl called Karin Busch who, in the horrific events of that night, lost her mother Margaretha and saw her twin brother Wolfram blinded by the fires.

She said: “I will never get it out of my mind, I will never forget that night.

“My family had gone to bed and I was the only one up. I was sitting up sewing a carpet bag for a friend. All of a sudden there was this loud alarm and I remember switching the lights off and looking out of the window.”

Mrs Churchill, who now lives in Newland, Witney, said the night sky was lit up as pathfinder planes from RAF bomber command dropped flares. She said: “I did not realise what was happening.

“We never thought Dresden would be targeted like this.”

To mark the anniversary of the bombing, Mrs Churchill will be laying a single white rose at an altar in Christ Church in Oxford.

She said: “The red roses are for Valentines, but on this day every true Dresdener wears a white rose to remember those that were killed.”

During the bombing, she quickly raced to wake her family and rushed them to the cellar to take cover.

She said: “Within minutes the ceiling collapsed and an unexploded bomb came straight through the roof.

“We had to climb out of there. I was holding on to my brother and my mother, but at some point I lost my mother and I never saw her again.”

She later came across a pile of ashes where she found the diamond earrings her mother had been wearing.

“I still have them to this day,” she said.

In the years after the horrors of that night, Mrs Churchill went on to train as a sculptor and nurse and moved to study English in Oxfordshire.

She met and fell in love with Patrick Churchill — a decorated war hero and former Captain in the Royal Marines, who had taken part in the Normandy landings.

The pair married in Germany in October 1964 after Mrs Churchill was forced to return home when her work visa expired. They went on to have one son, Francis, 40.

The pair have since become active members of the Dresden Trust, an organisation committed to the restoration of the city and remembrance of those who died 64 years ago.

Mr Churchill, 84, said: “I think my wife has been a very brave woman.”