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This story was submitted to the People’s War site on behalf of Dorothy Nash and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was 3 when the war started and one of my first memories was that of going with mum and dad to visit her sister in Manchester. I can’t quite remember if dad was on leave or if it was just before he joined up in 1941. But I remember Pauldens department store burning down after being hit. On the way back to Bolton on the bus, there was an air raid and dad kept trying to push me down under the bus seat, as the driver continued driving through it all. Then when we got to Farnsworth, soldiers were stopping the traffic and we all had to go into the Robin Hood pub for safety. I must have gone to sleep, for when I awoke, I was back at home, my dad had carried me in his arms all the way home a distance of about 3 miles.

I didn’t really realise there was a war going on, until I began to hear things on the radio and mum put sticky stuff on the windows to re-inforce the glass in case of a blast. My little sister was born in 1941 and Mum had to go out to work, the neighbours collected us from school and nursery. Everyone was so kind and tried to help one another.

Of course there was rationing, no fresh eggs, only dried egg powder. Mum dug our front garden up and grew potatoes, carrots and strawberries. I couldn’t eat strawberries as a child as I seemed to have an allergy to them, not now though, I can eat them now. In our back garden we had the Anderson shelter, but we didn’t go into it much we preferred next doors, they had bunk beds in theirs.

I remember at school we had two air raid shelters and every day we would practice going into them and donning our gas masks, it was very dark in there and I think there were seats to sit on.

At Beaumont Road about half a mile from school there were always tanks and we used to stand there and watch the lorries coming from de Haviland about a mile away loaded up with aircraft wings and tails. The lower of Bolton was bombed and we went out watching the flashes and searchlights and listening to the explosions.

We children made up concerts and performed them for our friends and parents, we charged half an old penny and money raised went to the war effort as it did when we borrowed a piece of old lace curtain to make a veil for the May Queen and knocked from door to door collecting. One old lady insisted she got a receipt for her money, I remember telling my dad and he made sure she got one. Once she realised that we were genuine, she was always very nice to us afterwards. We also collected old jam jars and papers and these we took for collection at school.

Dad’s family came from Ireland and we sailed across the Irish Sea, to visit them on occasions. We went from Heysham to Belfast, we always had a berth, but it was a scary journey, especially as Harland and Wolf, boat builders were at the docks and were a sitting target for the German planes.

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