FIFTY years ago today the soccer world was sickened when 33 fans were crushed to death at Burnden Park as Bolton prepared for their sixth round FA Cup clash with Stoke.

For the families of all who attended that fateful soccer game there were to be hours of waiting for news of loved ones after talk of the tragedy spread through the town.

For the Bertwistle family of Duke Street, Blackburn, that news was to bring agonising heartache as they were told that 14-year-old Harry was the youngest victim of the tragedy.

About 70,000 supporters had poured on to the terraces to see the action.

When the gates were closed, hundreds more supporters climbed the walls of the Embankment to get into the packed ground, crushing fellow supporters in their midst.

Harry's sister Marjorie, now 71 and living in Darwen, can remember the tragic events as they unfolded as if it were yesterday.

She said: "My sister Ethel and I were working as nurses at the time, but I was enjoying my first weekend off in months.

"Harry had gone to the match with his friends and we had heard what had happened. "We weren't on the telephone then, but when Harry hadn't come home by 8pm, my dad, Fred, went out to telephone the ground.

"They told him there wasn't anybody among the dead as young as he was and not to worry.

"But he still hadn't come home at midnight and he went to phone again.

"We knew when he came home by the look on his face that Harry was dead."

Marjorie said the family had been pleased that Harry, a pupil at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, had been too young to be called into active service during the war.

But less than a year after the war had ended, the accordion-playing teenager's life was to come to a sad end.

Marjorie said: "My mother, Cissie, never really got over his death. It is something that never goes away."

A memorial service will be held tomorrow for the dead at Bolton Parish Church at 2pm.

A plaque in memory of the dead was erected at Burnden Park in 1992 and unveiled by former Bolton great Nat Lofthouse.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.