STRUCTURE

The opening episode sets the Homefront scene in Bolton, England. This working class Industrial town lives for its football team, as depicted in Lowry's famous painting, 'Going to the Match'. They are down to earth folk whom the aristocracy of the period would call the salt of the earth. We are introduced to stars of the Bolton team, their girl friends and their wives. They were the 'David Beckham's of their day. Feted on and off the pitch. Treated as VIP's at the dance halls and theatres, where they mixed with the contemporary celebrities, Jack Hylton and George Formby. Ray Westwood, the pin up boy of the day, signed a sponsorship deal with Brylcreem and his face is plastered over billboards and newspapers. We meet the Manager, Charles Foweraker, who had risen from a humble ticket seller to become one of the top in his profession, taking his team to three FA Cup victories in the 1920’s, and turning down a record breaking transfer offer from Chelsea for Ray Westwood. We meet the young fans, most notably Nat Lofthouse, who was to become a lifelong Bolton player and club member. The Bolton Wanderers were living the high life. There is an air of gloom when the Bolton Captain, Harry Goslin, steps up to a microphone before a match against Sunderland on Easter Saturday, 1939. The Ministry of Defence had made a request to the FA to assist with their recruitment drive for the Territorial Army. Only Bolton Wanderers were to rise to the challenge, not merely to defend 'King and Country', but, as Harry would say, “to protect my wife and family I will enlist”. 

When war is declared on September 3rd 1939, 32 of the 35 players and staff are called-up to join the local Bolton artillery regiment. As the players are trucked out an enthusiastic Nat Lofthouse arrives to be signed as an apprentice. He, and his generation, are to carry the banner whilst his heroes from the playing field switch to the battlefield – with a massive drop in pay. Their lives are to radically change forever. The team are now incorporated into the British army and represent and play part time for Bolton when they can. Their team supplemented with guest players who are stationed near by. Stan Hanson, along with many new TA recruits, takes the opportunity to marry his long term sweetheart, May. Turning a demoralising time into a celebration with his entire team at the Palaise. Live fire training continues with Sergeant Hawarden, a career soldier who had distinguished himself in the First World War. They are told that they will be leaving for France. In a surreal moment Harry Goslin and Ernie Forrest are told they are flying to Paris. Why? To play in a friendly England/France International! The game must go on! Ray Westwood, perhaps inspired by Stan and May, sends a telegram to his long time girlfriend, Fanny, saying they are to be wed in a few days. Fanny had been living with Ray's family since she was orphaned, so it was not unexpected! The Westwood household is put in to turmoil, making the preparations and altering his mother's own wedding dress for Fanny. The evening of Ray's arrival, they watch him walking from the station only to disappear from sight with a scream as he falls into the pit his father has dug for a bomb shelter. A great family affair, but with little time to consummate the marriage, as Ray's posting arrives. The whole team are instructed to bring their football kit with them and embark for France. They are stationed in Belgium. After their first air attack, that creates more damage than casualties, Ray Westwood, is seconded by the CO to be his driver. Bidding farewell to Ernie Forrest, and his other team mates he heads into the unknown. Ray Westood and the CO, manage to find themselves driving towards the enemy. Only alerted to their error by a near collision with a despatch rider hurtling in the opposite direction. 

The episode starts with the happy reunion of the lost Wartime Wanderers, including Ray Westwood. On their return they see a complete change in their home town. England is being bombed. Teenagers are working down the mines, women replace men in their jobs, especially in the munitions and armament factories springing up all over the country. En route North, the train carrying the Bolton team has a stop over in the Black Country, not far from Ray Westwood's home. He takes the opportunity to visit his new wife – and presents her with a kit bag of dirty clothes! There is a heavy atmosphere at home where football had been banned due to the danger from airraids, only to be reinstalled with “ARP” spotters during matches. The football is there to raise moral. Something that Charles Foweraker had pushed for, and Churchill endorsed by taking his cabinet to a match in London. With fuel rationing and travel restrictions the FA creates new regional divisions and introduces Guest appearances. For over a year the Bolton team are shifted around the country, guesting for different teams, and meeting their spouses and families at every possibly opportunity. It is during one such visit that Ernie Forrest hears of the death of his brother during the Dunkirk retreat. The first close-to-home casualty for the Wartime Wanderers. It is a time of uncertainty made worse by the blitz which visited the industrial heartland around Liverpool and Manchester, bringing bombing too close to home. There was a tacit victory when a German bomber is shot down in Tong Moor. Nat Lofthouse races to the scene and through the flames, spies Alma, his childhood girlfriend – a relationship that is to reignite. The regiment are told they are going overseas. Ray Westwood is hoping to escape the posting as he is awaiting an operation on his knee. The written authorisation withheld by a clerk, until long after embarkation. Destination Egypt via the cape of Good Hope 

Aftermath. This is now the real fight and this episode spans the war diaries of the regiment. At midnight on October 23rd 1942 the Bolton Artillery joined the barrage that blazed across the sky and was to result in total victory by November 5th . Churchill was to say, “We never had a victory before El Alamein, with never had a defeat after it.” The remants of Rommel's army are on the run, fleeing towards Libya, with the Allies in hot pursuit. On the home-front the wives are worried for their loved ones. We see contrast between the battlefront and the home-front as the uncertainty is hitting home. The young Nat Lofthouse is playing for the mens team, avidly watched by his fiance, Alma, who is now an ARP warden. Having chased Rommel as far as Tobruk in Libya the Team are returned to Cairo. In a reprise of the 1914 Christmas Day truce, Ernie Forrest & Ray Westwood arrange a Christmas Day football match against German Prisoners of War - - a game that officially never happened. As Nat and Alma see in the New Year, on ARP duty in Bolton, the Team are crossing the Jordan Valley, heading for Baghdad 

The Regiment are shipped out to Italy, where they merge with the Indian 8th Army. By now the Italians had all but surrendered, welcoming the Allied soldiers as saviours and liberators. Upon arrival the local mayor even proposes a friendly football match with the Bolton Wanderers. Never ones to miss a trick, Ernie Forrest and Ray Westwood, begin swapping their milk rations for the Hindi soldiers beer rations, and set up a beer stall at the ensuing match. Brief respite, before being thrown into the most bloody and arduous battles of the entire war. Their training becomes apparent having to climb up mountain sides to create artillery fire points that can out gun the installed German forces. The weather is atrocious. Shells explode on rocky cliffs cutting men apart and in the valley seas of mud are worse than Passchaendale. But the regiment moves along fighting mile for mile against the Germans. Harry Goslin is the forward spotter for the troop and mans more and more perilous outposts. The Bolton Artillery play their part in the battle to take control of the River Sangro crossing. Fighting takes place for over a month and a number of Goslin's fellow Bolton players are temporarily removed. On 14 December 1943, a mortar bomb explodes in the tree under which Goslin has made his observation point. He is hit in the back by shrapnel and wood and mortally wounded although he fights for life for a few more days. This was to be a devastating blow; that could have completely broken the teams morale. But his spirit did not die with him, it compelled the remaining Wanderers to play their role in the victory at Monte Cassino which left the Monastery a total ruin – and on to total victory. 

Episode 11 – Disaster & Triumph Like many returning soldiers Ray Westwood was to meet his son, Alan, for the first time. It was to be a while before they would truly bond. His father, who had counselled against enlisting, was still on this tack. Ray had sacrificed his career. A notion temporarily dispelled when Ray receives a summons from Foweraker to attend training at Burden Park. The war had taken its toll, and whilst Foweraker kept to his word in re-employing the entire team, not all of them would get a game. But the bond between the Wartime Wanderers was for life. Here too there were many changes. New coaches, new players, new regime. The shy boy Ray had passed on his way to war, now a strapping man and star striker – with whom he was to build a winning partnership on the pitch and a friendship away from it. So when Nat Lofthouse was to marry Alma Foster the following year, the entire team are invited. Nat's proudest moment was emerging from the tunnel alongside Ray on March 9th 1946 for a FA Cup 6th Round match against Stoke City. It was also to be his worst moment. It was estimated that the crowd was in excess of 85,000 people. As part of the main stand had been requisitioned by the Ministry of Supply in 1940, and was full on large canisters and whicker encased bottles, most of the crowd were forced on to the crude dirt terraces. As Railway Embankment end became packed to over capacity, it was decided to close the turnstiles. This, however, did not stop more people entering the ground, with people climbing in from the railway, climbing over the closed turnstiles and, when a locked gate was opened, entering through it. During the melee, such was the pressure from the railway end, that many fans were inexorably pushed along the side of the pitch, around the far end and eventually right out of the ground. Shortly after the game started, the crowd began spilling onto the pitch and the game was temporarily stopped to allow the pitch to be cleared. However, at this time, two barriers collapsed and the crowd fell forward, crushing those underneath. The game was restarted but was quickly halted again when a police officer came onto the pitch to speak to the referee, George Dutton, to inform him there had been fatalities. 33 people were to lose their lives, with hundreds injured. The dead and injured were taken from the railway end terrace, with those who had died lain along the touchline and covered in coats. A little under half an hour after leaving the pitch, the game was restarted. Nat recalls with sickening detail having to step over the corpses lining the tunnel. In the aftermath, at dawn the following morning, with the bodies removed, and deathly silence hanging over the stadium he ruminated about the far worse experiences Ray and his team mates had witnessed in their six years of war. Just how important Nat had become to Bolton Wanderers was demonstrated not long afterwards. Whilst the team were preparing in the changing room word came to them that Fanny and Alma were being refused admittance to the stands because they didn't have their players wives passes with them. Ray flatly refused to go on to the pitch unless she was escorted in the VIP box. Foweraker was summoned. Nat took his stand with Ray – Alma, too must be escorted in. So it was that Charles Foweraker escorted the two ladies in plain view of all, to take their place alongside each other. There was huge applause from around the stadium as Ray and Nat emerge from the tunnel together. Over the weekend o 13th September 1947 the Wartime Wanderers had once again to prove how rapidly they could respond to an emergency. Major Greenhalgh put out an appeal for all serving and former members of the 53RD Field Regiment and their wives to attend a ceremony at the Silverwell Street Drill Hall. The guest of Honour is Monsieur Nutten, Mayor of Lambersart, returning the regimental drum that had been abandoned on their retreat to Dunkirk. The Mayour found, and kept it hidden from the Germans for the entire duration of the French occupation. The achievements of the Wartime Wanderers is summed up in an article that appeared in the Bolton Evening News. FINE RECORD OF BOLTON ARTILLERY That it has distinguished itself is clear from the award of three Military Crosses, five Military Medals and four Mentions in Despatches. Those men who have gone through the entire programme, including a batch of Bolton Wanderers, have experienced all the vicissitudes of war from headlong retreat to fierce pursuit of the enemy and endured climatic hardships from those chilly hours on the beaches of Dunkirk to desert heat, sandstorms and flies. Between Cairo and Tobruk they knew the meaning of African heat and African rain. In Iraq they survived miserable weather. In Italy conditions have varied from blazing sunshine when they landed to bitter winter cold and snow, and they have battled through all of it with the fortitude and Spartan courage that is the stock-in-trade of an incomparible fighting force slowly but surely heading for home.