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This story has been added to the People’s War Website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire Home guard on behalf of Pauline Bolton and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was born in Luton Bedfordshire just one field away from Luton Airport, on the 25th October 1937, my name is Pauline Anne Bolton, nee Tregartha.

My first recollection of the 2nd World War is of my father throwing me over a fence dividing us from next doors garden wrapped in an eiderdown, so that we could take refuge in their Anderson Shelter, which they had dug into the bottom of the garden.

My parents had moved down to Luton from Accrington during the depression of the thirties as they were both cotton weavers who were not in regular work at that time. My father found work much easier to come by in the south and worked for Vauxhall Motors in their paint department, but in 1940 this department suffered a direct hit from the Luftwaffe and out of 45 men employed in that dept. my father was the sole survivor, having hid under a washbasin in the gents.toilets. This caused my mother great trouble and as she said. ‘If I’m going to die, I’m going to die in Lancashire’ so we came back to Accrington.

They rented a house in Lonsdale Street any my dad went to work at Bristol Aircraft at Clayton-le-Moors.

I contracted scarlet fever and in those days you were confined to the house for seven weeks, my parents had got an Anderson Shelter in their front room, so my bed was erected on the top of this, so that I could see all my friends playing out in the street.

Whilst living there I remember Howard and Bullough’s Woodyard, which was at the rear of our house going up in flames, my small bedroom overlooked this and I was almost choked with the smoke.

During the war there was a big water tank at the top of the street, which was a real temptation to all the children and a great danger. At the end of the war the local residents had a huge bonfire next to it, something my generation had never experienced before.

In wartime children did not get many Christmas presents and we would receive whatever could be constructed, like a wooden parrot on a swing. However one of my dad’s ladies who worked with him, her husband managed to get a large doll with opening and shutting eyes, I was the envy of all my friends. Dad said I should call her Yvonne, as she came from Antwerp just before it had fallen into enemy hands. She was beautiful with a set of coat, hat and muff in royal blue velvet, with a white fur trimming on the muff.

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