In the face of adversity . . .

IN 1943 Good Friday fell on April 23. There was fighting all over the world on that day. In Leningrad, in the skies of Europe, in the Pacific, and in the Warsaw Ghetto, men fought and killed each other.

At Guiriat El Attach in Tunisia, a company of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment was heavily counter attacked.

The company was almost wiped out and only one officer was left.

This was Lieutenant Wilwood Alexander Sandys Clarke, known as Peter. He was then 23 years old and in peacetime he lived at Dimple Hall in Egerton.

Lieutenant Clarke had been wounded in the head during the counter attack.

Despite this he gathered together the remnants of the company and led them forward.

They came under heavy fire from a machine gun post. Clarke positioned his men to give him cover and then went forward alone.

He killed or captured the machine gunners and destroyed their gun.

Almost immediately the company came under fire from another strong point. Again Clarke advanced to knock it out.

And then he did it again, leading the scratch platoon he had formed on to its objective.

Later that day Lieutenant Clarke was killed when single-handedly attacking two sniper posts.

He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for "outstanding personal bravery and tenacious devotion to duty".

Heroism usually comes with a price.

Peter Sandys Clarke's wife learned that she was a widow two days after giving birth to a baby son, who was christened Robin Peter, in July 1943.

Peter Sandys Clarke was not the first Boltonian to win the Victoria Cross. That honour fell to Lance Sergeant Arthur Evans of Davenport Street.

On September 2, 1918, Sergeant Evans, then with the Lincolnshire Regiment, swam across a deep river near Etaing in France and then crawled behind a German machine -gun post, shooting two of the crew and taking the rest prisoner.

When he returned to his home in Davenport Street in 1919 he was given a deserved hero's welcome.

The people of Bolton were involved directly in the Second World War, in a way that had not been true of the First.

It was a total war. All the resources of the country were mobilized and all the people stood in the front line

The first signs of what the coming conflict would be like had appeared months before the fighting started.

Gas masks were issued as early as February 1939. In March of that year there was a trial blackout.

The correspondence pages of the Bolton Evening News of that time were filled with articles and letters about air raids.

At that time people thought of the Bomber in the same way that we thought of the Atomic Bomb in the Cold War.

The end of civilization was expected, with hundreds of thousands of casualties. To prevent such a thing from coming to pass Anderson shelters were distributed, the first arriving in September 1939, the week after war was declared.

During Air Raid drills school children were sheltered in the vast cellars beneath cotton mills.

Anti-aircraft and searchlight batteries dotted the town.

In the event Bolton got off pretty lightly.

The town received 543 warning messages, and on 240 occasions the sirens wailed out their warning -- the first was on June 20, 1940.

The first actual raid came on September 1, 1940, when 13 bombs were dropped on Farnworth.

Four days later 11 bombs fell on Deane.

On October 19, it was Moses Gate's turn to receive two bombs.

A week later Eagley Mill and Tintern Avenue got a bomb apiece.

Incendiaries dropped on Junction Road on December 23.

The single worst incident in the Air War on Bolton was in 1941.

On October 12 two bombs fell on Ardwick Street and Punch Street, just a few yards away from where the Zeppelin bombs had fallen in 1916 -- 11 people were killed, nine seriously injured, 55 were slightly injured, and many left without homes.

The last air raid experienced by our town was in April 1942.

In all, five tons of explosive had rained out of the sky. Bolton had been lucky, but even so 17 people were killed and 29 seriously injured.

The fact that so many bombs fell on the Deane area might have been because the bombers were aiming at the De Havilland aircraft factory in Lostock and undershooting because of bad visibility.

There were also accidents.

On October 17, 1941, a plane crashed into Mornington Road, killing the pilot and injuring three people.

On August 7, 1942, an American plane crashed on Winter Hill. The crew of five were injured, but survived.

On February 2, 1943, a British reconnaissance plane crashed into the reservoir near Belmont Road. Both crew members were killed.

Everyone was in the front line. On the night of the Ardwick and Punch Street raid Mrs Ethel Topliss, of John Street, woke to find that the back of her house had been blown into rubble.

In the dark and confusion she led her four children down to street level and safety.

Her husband, Albert Topliss, was away in the army. He went to North Africa and fought there, having been twice torpedoed on the way.

His brother John was at Dunkirk and went deaf. His nephew Ernie Acton was in the Army in Germany at the end of the war and married a German girl. Ernie's brother Harry, was a prisoner of war.

In 1955 one of Ethel Topliss's sons, Kenneth, married Margaret Aspinall of Oriel Street.

Her father, John William Aspinall, had been in the First World War, where his half-brother James had been killed.

In the Second, as a plumber, he spent nights away from home repairing gas mains during the Manchester Blitz.

Of his brothers, Albert was in the 14th Army in Burma, Fred was in Norway, Tom was in the RAF, and Gilbert was at Salerno.

Of his nephews Jim Hunter was in the army, while Jim Aspinall was a prisoner of the Japanese working on the notorious Burma railway.

His brother-in-law Jack Farrell was in the RAF in Iraq.

What was true of this family -- my family -- was true for thousands of others.

"Total war" meant hardship. The first ration books were ready to be issued in Bolton in November 1939.

Luxury goods disappeared from the shops and austerity was the byword.

When the King and Queen visited Bolton in March 1945 they dined on a "three course austerity lunch" in the banqueting suite at the Town Hall.

Elsewhere there was a drive to make the most of Britain's resources.

At a time when the country relied on Atlantic convoys for its very life, every scrap saved was vital.

The Corporation launched a "Scrap the Railings" campaign in June 1940, to salvage iron for the war effort.

Later, aluminium pots and pans were volunteered so they could be turned into Spitfires.

The school children of the town collected scrap paper. In all Bolton saved more than £16 million in the war.

The war was a time to do your bit.

When the Home Guard was formed in May 1940, 2,500 registered in Bolton in the first week.

People volunteered to be ARP wardens and Fire Watchers.

War transformed the town. The new Technical College on Manchester Road, finished in September 1939, became a training centre for RAF wireless operators. Rows of tanks and military vehicles were stored on Old Kiln Lane and Beaumont Road.

Gradually the tide of war turned. On September 13, 1944, the Blackout was partially lifted, to be replaced by the "Dim Out" which lasted until April 23 of the next year.

On September 15, 1944, fire watching ended. The Home Guard was disbanded in December.

When Victory in Europe came, a huge crowd in Victoria Square greeted it quietly but gladly.

The war was over, and Bolton had done its bit. Austerity remained, but there was a wind of change in the air.