COALFIELDS AND MINERS AT WAR
Most of us with relatively recent coalmining ancestors will have one or more examples who were involved in some way with the armed forces during the first half of the twentieth century. He may have been one of the many thousands of pitmen who responded to Kitchener’s call for volunteers after the start of the First World War. If not he would certainly have known workmates who joined the armed forces at this time, or a year or two later, many never to return to their collieries. Twenty years afterwards, in 1936–37, significant groups of miners voluntarily fought against the growing threat of Fascism during the Spanish Civil War; and of course many others saw active service during the Second World War or joined the Home Guard. Staying with the Home Front, your mining ancestor may have been a recruit of a different kind, a ‘Bevin Boy’, conscripted to the mines to make up for the shortage of labour during the ‘coal crisis’. Whatever the background or situation, discovering the role and contributions of your ‘wartime miners’ is a very relevant and rewarding part of family history research.
First World War 1914–18
The three men set off deeper into the darkness. It took them five minutes to reach the point where Jack was crouching with his ear to the wall. At the end of the timbered tunnel they could see a ragged hole where German diggers had burst through.
Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong (1993)
Physical and mental attributes such as fitness, strength and tenacity had always made mineworkers very useful recruits for the armed forces. Often St John’s-trained, miners came into their own for a variety of first-aid duties within the Royal Army Medical Corps, and their strong arms and backs also made them ideal stretcher-bearers. Whether actual or perceived, the miner’s smaller stature was also advantageous when he was used in confined spaces, for example when deployed towards the end of the war in tanks (for the Tank Corps). But it was the miner’s unique underground and engineering skills that were the most desirable attributes for a variety of strategic situations, no more so when assigned as a ‘human mole’, tunnelling towards enemy lines on the Western Front (Royal Engineers Corps).
Detail from the front cover of the souvenir brochure published by Cortonwood Collieries for the unveiling ceremony in memory of their miners killed in the First World War and in honour of those who served in the Forces.
Information and help about tracing your military ancestors is now easily accessible online and via published guides, some of which are listed below. The main theme of this chapter is to provide the context and background for the many thousands of miners who served in the armed forces during the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the First World War. Although some joined the Navy it was the infantry regiments that recruited the vast majority of miners. The use of emergency labour during the Second World War – the so-called ‘Bevin Boys’ – is also outlined, along with research suggestions.
Why did your miner-ancestor swap the dangers and demands of pit-work for the uncertainties of soldiering? Masses of miners joined up in 1914–15 for very similar reasons to other volunteers, but, patriotism and peer-pressure apart, economic circumstances in the coal industry pushed many into armed service. At the start of the war coal was stockpiled and miners were reduced to part-time work or unemployment. Thus many joined up because they thought that they would be far better off, even feeling it was a safer option. And yet the human carnage in the industry remained very high: 1,753 killed and a staggering 178,962 injured (i.e., requiring at least seven days off work), according to official figures for 1913 alone. The shadow of Senyghenydd, when 439 men and boys were killed in a single disaster, was fresh in the memory, no more so than in south Wales pit communities. Each day an average of four miners were in fact ‘killed in action’ in British mines.
And yet statistics show that the call to arms in all coalfield areas was extremely successful. Before hostilities started there were 1,116,648 workers employed in British mines. After seven months of war 191,170 miners had enlisted, a figure that increased to an astonishing 250,000 in 1915. A measure of the importance of miner-recruits was that by February 1915 almost 1 in 5 of all military volunteers came from the pit communities of England (18.00%), Wales (18.7%) and Scotland (21.3%). Locally, recruitment into the Territorial Army (‘Terriers’) also attracted miners; for some miners, attendance here had been a welcome respite from the pit for a few weeks a year, so to enlist ‘permanently’ was a natural progression.
Coal production for the war effort at home and abroad remained extremely important: for the Navy, for the strategic operation of the Allies, for domestic transport, for munitions, for the supply of TNT (and other strategic products), even, arguably, for the morale of the civilian population. Speaking to a coal-industry conference on 29 July 1915, Lloyd George proclaimed that coal was ‘everything for us’, the country’s life and blood, its ‘international coinage’. At the end of the same year manpower in the pits had dropped to 953,000. The resulting fall in coal production was so serious that Belgian refugee ex-miners were allowed to work in British mines.
If your miner-ancestor stayed in mining (or was a new miner) during the war his job was harder than ever. Investment by the coal companies in mechanisation was slow or non-existent before 1914 – the typical attitude was why spend money on machines when muscle-power would do? Not surprisingly, given the terrible conditions, absenteeism in the coal industry remained an abiding problem for many years.
Throughout the early war years there was a great employer preoccupation with the shortfall of labour and production. Of course it was the younger, ‘more energetic’ miners, alongside experienced colliers in their twenties and thirties, who were most missed. The recruiting momentum from some collieries was extremely high and may only have come to light after the war when some form of ‘presentation’ took place. Of the 900 employees at Thrybergh and Swinton collieries in south Yorkshire, for example, nearly 300 joined the armed services, or one in three of all workmen, at least thirty-one of these paying the ultimate price.
Alarmed coal owners campaigned for urgent ‘solutions’ to the shortfall in labour, each one vehemently opposed by the mining unions: the abolition of the Eight Hour Act (which limited work-time underground), reduction of holidays, even a lowering of the age limit for the employment of boys underground. What did help was that many more females were employed – mainly as labourers – to work on the surface of collieries. By December 1916 the Government’s response to all the pressure was to take the coal industry under state control, starting in south Wales (where industrial relations was poor) and then, from 1 March 1917 (to March 1921), nationwide. This ‘nationalisation’ really meant controlling output, distribution and wages, for the coal owners continued to receive guaranteed profits as part of the arrangement.
The Military Services Act of 29 January 1916 introduced conscription, initially for British male subjects aged 19–41, but some of the most vital types of mining jobs were exempted. However, volunteers for ‘tunnelling corps’ continued to be called for and in June the Cabinet authorised the potential release of up to 100,000 miners for enlistment. Although soldiering had lost some of its idealistic attraction, significant numbers of pitmen still enlisted.
The massive response from miners to the call to arms was most obvious in industrial areas where the so-called ‘Pals battalions’ (part of what soon became the 31st Division of the New Army), were established. Recruits could serve alongside workmates, friends and neighbours. In Accrington, 104 men were accepted for service in the first three hours of recruitment on 14 September 1914, a good number of them miners. Ten days later, the Accrington Pals, or 11th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment, to use their official name, was ‘full strength’, with 1,100 men. In the Yorkshire coal town of Barnsley, more than a thousand men were recruited for the 13th York and Lancasters in less than two weeks, the town council therefore deciding to support the raising of a second Pals battalion (the 14th York and Lancasters). A similar pattern of recruitment occurred in other coalfield areas including Durham (18th Durham Light Infantry), Leeds (15th West Yorkshires), Manchester (16th Manchesters), Salford (15th Lancashire Fusiliers), Tyneside Scottish (20th Northumberland Fusiliers), Cardiff (11th Welsh Regiment), Swansea (14th Welsh Regiment) and north Wales (13th Royal Welsh Fusiliers). A full listing of Pals battalions can be seen at http:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pals_battalions.
A single colliery was capable of providing a significant number of volunteers for the New Army, as can be seen in this example for the York and Lancasters (Barnsley Pals) Regiment, recruited from my paternal grandfather’s pit, Monckton, near Barnsley.
Several of the Pals battalions suffered very heavy casualties during the disastrous Somme offensive of 1916. Of the 720 Accrington Pals who took part in the attack on Serre, 584 were killed, wounded or missing, almost eight out of every ten soldiers. The Leeds Pals lost an astonishing 750 of 900 participants and the Sheffield City Battalion lost about half of its men.
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Andrew Jackson’s excellent site www.pals.org.uk, which focuses on the Accrington, Barnsley and Sheffield Pals battalions, includes a research guide and is also useful for information on the First World War as a whole.
Of the other army units that recruited miners several stand out. A ‘miners’ battalion’ was raised by the West Yorkshire Coalowners’ Association, very quickly, from 5 September 1914. The 12th (Service) Battalion (Miners) (Pioneers), part of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI), or ‘t’owd twelfth’, was founded in Leeds. Recruits trained in Otley and then Burton Leonard, near Ripon, prior to service overseas, initially Egypt and then on the Western Front in France. The ‘Miners’ 12th’ was the lead battalion of the 31st Division, operational on the first day of the Somme offensive, not only in ‘sapping’ (strategic excavation) work, but also in attacks with other Yorkshire Pals’ battalions.
One of the most extraordinary recruiting successes involving large numbers of miners in Wales and northern England especially were the battalions collectively known as ‘Bantams’. Thousands of sturdy and skilled miners ruled out of the initial recruitment through a height restriction of 5ft 3in came forward when this regulation was lifted, following an impressive campaign by the Birkenhead MP Alfred Bigland. Earlier, a group of ‘miner rejects’ had called on the Cheshire MP to state their case, one of them even offering to ‘fight any man’ in order to prove his worth as a soldier. From Birkenhead, Bantam battalions soon spread to other coalfield regions, forming two British (35th and 40th) Divisions (twenty-eight battalions in all) and two Canadian battalions. The old mining area of Durham was fairly typical in its response, the momentum of volunteering well described by Sidney Allinson in his tribute book, The Bantams:
Men streamed from collieries at Percy Main and Esh Winning; from Shillbottle where men worked stripped naked because of the heat underground; from Washington … and from pits at Morpeth, Cowpen, and Blaydon Main, and a dozen other coal workings.
But some of the Durham Light Infantry miner-recruits were not in the best of of health:
Doctors were horrified at the condition of a batch of Bantam miner volunteers from Monkwearmouth Colliery, whose bodies were covered with carbuncles and huge open sores caused by years of working in hot salt water seeping down from the North Sea far above the mine tunnels.
War service, at least in theory, brought an improvement in health.
For many small Welsh miners it was, at last, a chance to demonstrate their strength and skills and even earn a bob or two, summed up in a wonderful quote by Albert Lewis, in Allinson’s book:
We were miners in our late teens, and we set out to join the new Tunnelling Companies that were being formed by the Royal Engineers. An agent had come to the pit and told us we could work as Army Moles, digging under the German lines, and be paid as much as five shillings a day. That was big wages in those days, so we set off to make our fortunes!
As well as tunnelling, the Bantams proved to be highly adept in the confined space of the new tanks, as well as in many other awkward but strategic situations. But it was at a massive human cost, as they were to be involved in some of the hardest battles of the war, at Arras and Bourlon Wood in particular.
‘Their old work in a new guise’ was the magazine caption used under this contemporary illustration showing a pair of tunnellers. These two ex-Durham miners were said to be ‘preparing a practice sap’.
It is only relatively recently that the role of former miners, or so-called ‘clay-kickers’ – the First World War tunnellers – has been appreciated more widely by the British public, and worldwide, helped in part by the extraordinary success of Sebastian Faulks’ best-selling novel Birdsong (first published in 1993 and adapted for the stage and television in 2010–12), and through well-researched military books (see below). The accounts of tunnelling by ex-miners and the use of reminiscences make these sources particularly valuable for family historians.
Sapper William Hackett VC (1873–1916)
Hackett was a ‘coal miner’s filler’ according to the 1901 census, living at Denaby Main, a south Yorkshire mining village named after its pit. Desperate for work, he had walked to Denaby from Nottingham at the age of 18, and after a twenty-three-year stint got a job at nearby Manvers Main Colliery, near Mexborough, moving there in about 1914. Hackett was therefore an experienced miner, strong and robust despite his build and stature (less than 5 feet 3 inches tall and only 1181bs) when war broke out. Keen to enlist, he was rejected on three occasions by the York and Lancasters due to his age – and an apparent heart condition – but was welcomed as a 42-year-old volunteer with the Royal Engineers in October 1915. After just two weeks’ training he was in France with 254th Tunnelling Company, Corps of Royal Engineers.
Sapper Hackett’s extraordinary act of bravery took place between 22–23 June 1916 when, with four other men, he was digging a tunnel 40ft below ground towards enemy lines near Givenchy when a mine exploded above them. Buried by debris, Hackett managed to help three of his mates to safety through a hole that had been excavated by rescuers after twenty hours, but he insisted on staying with a badly injured man, Private Thomas Collins from Swansea. Unfortunately after four days the tunnel and the shaft collapsed and both men lost their lives. Their bodies were not recovered.
William Hackett was awarded the Victoria Cross, the first (and only) First World War tunneller to receive the award, albeit posthumously. His wife, Alice, received a pension of 21 shillings for herself and her now two dependant children. Sapper Hackett’s medal is displayed in the Royal Engineers Museum at Gillingham.
Detail of the plaque commemorating ‘Sapper’ William Hackett, now placed alongside the war memorial at Mexborough in South Yorkshire.
Specialist mining units of the Corps of Royal Engineers were established to excavate tunnels under no man’s land and enemy lines. By February 1915 eight tunnelling companies had been formed and in the summer of 1915 the British Army had at least 20,000 men experienced and active in underground warfare, mostly former miners. The miner-sappers had minimal military training and were subject to far more dangerous situations than mining at home, often sustaining heavy casualties. It was the most extreme form of mining, health and safety virtually non existent at times; but ‘Proto’ breathing apparatus and the miner’s old friends, canaries and mice, were used for rescue and gas detection. Matters improved after mines rescue bases were established.
Underground armed conflict and huge explosions apart, the working conditions – often with just candles for light – were extraordinarily bad. When carefully chipping through chalk, in shift rotation, some men suffered from snow blindness due to the glare from the rock. But tunnelling became a very sophisticated engineering process. The Germans, however, responded with equal ingenuity, tenacity and bravery. As time progressed the stalemate situation led to deeper and more extensive tunnels, massive detonations of mines or camouflets, and British and German ‘moles’ became increasingly sensitive to each other’s strategies in the fields of France and Flanders. ‘Listening duty’ was an integral and essential part of subterranean tactics. From Hill 60 to the battles on the Somme, Vimy Ridge and Arras, tunnelling was widespread; but the most spectacular example on the Western Front occurred during the Second Army attack on Messines Ridge on 7 June 1917, when nineteen deep mines were fired in timed succession, the blasts heard as far away as London. As many as 10,000 German casualties accrued, with only a few from the assaulting troops. The scenes of military tunnelling resulted in massive craters still bearing testimony to the actions, the largest, Lochnager, now a recognised historic battlefield site.
Casualties, honours and gallantry awards
It is individual stories and circumstances, often unearthed by local, family and military historians during the course of their research, that provide us with the most meaningful appreciation of the soldier-miners’ honours and the losses. It is also worth bearing in mind that there were over 6,600 miners ‘killed in action’ in their home pits during 1914–18, whilst producing coal in various forms for home and overseas consumption. Around 120,000 soldiers were discharged from the armed forces at the end of the war to return to the pits where they were previously employed.
The illustrated extract relating to the death of Corporal W. Clarke (a Corton-wood Colliery miner) appeared in the South Yorkshire Times on 10 July 1915. ‘Soldiers Died’ on Ancestry.com confirms that William Clarke, A/Sgt (308) 2nd Battalion Lancashire Fusiliers was killed in action on 29 June 1915. Clarke was born at Blyth, Nottinghamshire, and enlisted at Strensall, Yorkshire. The Commonwealth War Graves website gives his age as 30, and that he was the son of George William Clarke, of 5 Coronation Avenue, Dinnington, Rotherham; and husband of Harriet Dodds (formerly Clarke), of 61 Concrete Cottages, Wombwell, near Barnsley.
This interesting local newspaper feature, relating to the Lancashire Fusilier Corporal W. Clarke, is from the South Yorkshire Times, 10 July 1915. After major battles such as the Somme the papers were flooded with accounts of casualties and gallantry stories, often illustrated with small head-and-shoulder portrait photographs. South Yorkshire Times.
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Do check through local newspapers as they are a rich source of information regarding casualties, honours and awards. Collect examples for the period that your ancestor served, from his regiment, and from other soldier-miners, as well as any specific references. It’s a far better approach, providing proper context – then you can use primary and other sources to enhance what you have found.
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Colliery companies and their workmen were proud and informative about the number of their colleagues or employees recruited into the armed forces, some of them commissioning awards, medals and memorials; and the miners themselves usually contributed to this process. A trawl through local newspapers will reveal reported examples, and it is worthwhile extending your search through to about 1920, or even a little later, as ‘presentations’ and ‘tributes’ were made well after the end of the war.
For some larger collieries, the names of ‘fallen miners’ were inscribed separately on war memorials; indeed, some newly-commissioned memorials were dedicated entirely to pit workers who died/served in the war. This was the case at Cortonwood Colliery, where a ‘miners’ memorial’ was unveiled in front of the colliery’s offices on 27 September 1919. It is not surprising that a dedicated pitmen’s memorial was required here. Cortonwood had provided 665 enlistees, mainly for the infantry, ninety-four of whom (including William Clarke referred to above) lost their lives. All of their names are inscribed on the cenotaph-style memorial, which was made even more striking by the addition of sculptured figures of a soldier and a miner.
Where the listings of names on war memorials in former pit villages and small towns have been researched and published in some form or other they provide very useful information about individuals and their backgrounds. Do search via the internet, your local library or family history society for relevant deposits/uploads. The war memorial at Rawmarsh, near Rotherham, in south Yorkshire, one of the last in Britain to be unveiled in 1928, is a good example, researched by a local man, Mick Busby. It has over 320 names inscribed for the First World War (with about sixty missing). Miners accounted for around nine out of ten of all fatalities, a situation not uncommon in many pit villages. Here are abbreviated details of just one name from the memorial researched by Mick:
Private Joseph (‘Joe’) William Silkstone (1st/5th Battalion York and Lancaster Regiment: Gassed on the Somme.
Joe Silkstone was born at Dalton, near Rotherham in 1889, the son of Albert George and Alice, residing at 36 Carlton Terrace, Rawmarsh. After leaving school Joe went to work with his father at Aldwarke Main Colliery. In 1913, he married Annie Hinds, living at 6 House, 18 Court, Wellgate, Rotherham. Private Silkstone died of gas poisoning when the Germans first released phosgene gas into the British lines near Ypres on 19 December 1915, when he was aged 27. His widow was left with a one-year-old daughter, Eileen. Private Joseph Silkstone is buried at Bard Cot Military Cemetery, Boesinghe, Belgium (Grave I.J.4).
A variety of honours and awards were presented, including posthumously, to miners who served in the First World War, ranging from ‘pit war service medals’ or mementoes to the most outstanding bravery award of all: the Victoria Cross. Two hundred of the ‘soldier-miners’ at Thrybergh and Swinton collieries, already referred to above, were presented with inscribed silver watches and medals at a special ceremony in the church hall, and the occasion was extended so as to include presentations to relatives of the thirty-one men ‘who had fallen’. Not far away, the Wath Main Colliery Company issued 700 inscribed medals in honour of their employees’ war service, and neighbouring Mitchells Main Colliery commissioned solid gold medals, ‘by the company officials & workmen for war services’.
Even the most outstanding of First World War miner-soldiers may have been forgotten, but for the research of local and family historians. Mike Gomersall has uncovered a remarkable example: Thomas Bryan, a 35-year-old Yorkshire miner and Northumberland Fusilier (25th Service Battalion [2nd Tyneside Irish]). During the battle of Arras, on 9 April 1917, Bryan destroyed a German machine-gun post which had stopped the British advance. He was presented with his Victoria Cross by King George V in front of a 40,000 crowd at St James’ Park football ground, Newcastle, on 17 June. Six days later, on 23 June, to the strains of See The Conquering Hero Comes, he was given a huge welcome in his home town of Castleford, West Yorkshire. On 24 June 2012 a ceremony of remembrance organised by the Victoria Cross Trust took place at his graveside, in Arksey Cemetery, near Doncaster, where he was buried in 1945.
Thomas Bryan’s VC is part of the Lord Ashcroft collection at the Imperial War Museum, London.
A similar ceremony took place in my birth village of Royston, near Barnsley, in 2008, courtesy of the Royal British Legion, when a plaque was unveiled to the memory of another remarkable miner-VC recipient, Albert Shepherd. The 20-year-old private got his award following an outstanding act of battlefield bravery at Villers Plouich in northern France on 20 November 1917. The young rifleman attacked and disabled a German machine-gun post, killed two Germans in the action and took command of his company when the last officer and NCO had become casualties. Albert’s achievement is also celebrated at the Royal Green Jackets (Rifles) Museum in Winchester, Hampshire.
Company Sergeant Major John ‘Jack’ Henry Williams (1886–1953) VC DCM MM & Bar
Nantyglo (Monmouthshire)-born John Henry Williams is the most decorated non-commissioned officer in Welsh army history. In 1906 Jack enlisted in the South Wales Borderers, but bought himself out after a short time. He is described as a colliery blacksmith (probably at Marine Colliery in the village of Cwm) in the 1911 census. Williams enlisted again, as a private in the 10th Battalion South Wales Borderers in November 1914, and his leadership quality was such that within three months he was promoted to sergeant. On the Somme, 10–12 July 1916, Williams’s ‘conspicuous gallantry in action’ during the capture of Mametz Wood was recognised in the award of the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM). Not long afterwards, at Pilckem Ridge, on 31 July 1917 during the third battle of Ypres, he gained another gallantry award, the Military Medal (MM). After rescuing – under fire – a wounded colleague at Armentières on 30 October 1917 Williams was granted a Bar to his MM. The climax of the man’s extraordinary gallantry record occurred towards the end of the war. Here is his VC citation from the London Gazette:
For most conspicuous bravery, initiative and devotion to duty on the night of 7th–8th October 1918, when, during the attack on Villers Outreaux, when, observing that his company was suffering heavy casualties from an enemy machine gun, he ordered a Lewis Gun to engage it, and went forward, under heavy fire, to the flank of the enemy post which he rushed single-handed, capturing fifteen of the enemy. These prisoners, realising that Williams was alone, turned on him and one of them gripped his rifle. He succeeded in breaking away and bayonetting five enemy, whereupon the remainder again surrendered. By this gallant action and total disregard of personal danger, he was the means of enabling not only his own company but those on the flanks to advance.
Severely wounded by shrapnel in the right arm and leg, CSM Williams was discharged from the army on medical grounds on 17 October 1918. He was subsequently decorated with the Médaille Militaire by the French and at Buckingham Palace, in February 1919, George V presented him with four British bravery awards, separately, a unique occurrence. Jack’s medals can be seen at the South Wales Borderers and Monmouthshire Regiment Museum at Brecon, Powys.
Spanish Civil War 1936–39
Although direct involvement was small compared with the First World War, the role of miners as part of the British Battalion of the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War should not be ignored. Miners, most notably from Wales, were a significant part of the 2,500 British recruits. Over 500 British were killed. A file list of British and Irish volunteers killed in Spain can be downloaded via http://www.international-brigades.org.uk/british_volunteers/. Many others found themselves in Franco’s prisons. They were very idealistic volunteers, fighting against the rise of Fascism, continuing to participate right up to the end of the conflict. In May 1938 the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain raised a levy of 2s 6d in support of ‘miner comrades’ in Spain. A number of prominent miners’ union officials campaigned, recruited miners and took part, especially those with Welsh backgrounds and influence. The most famous were Will Paynter (b. Cardiff 1903), and Arthur Horner (b. Merthyr Tydfil 1894), who was president of the South Wales Miners’ Federation; both leaders were also prominent Communists.
If you have an miner-ancestor who was involved in the Spanish Civil War the International Brigade Memorial Trust is worth visiting for background information (www.international-brigades.org). The International Brigade Archive is lodged in the Marx Memorial Library, London (www.marx-memorial-library.org). George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938) remains a superb personal account. Two well-researched modern publications are listed in the Sources/Further Reading section below. Spartacus Educational (www.schoolnet.co.uk) also has very useful background information and primary sources relating to the Spanish Civil War, plus biographies of Horner and Paynter.
Second World War: ‘We’ll do the fighting if you get the coal’
The patriotism that most miners had at the start of the new war was mingled with despondency, if not bitterness. Wages in the industry had two unmistakable characteristics: they were extremely low and extremely complex; and by 1943 thousands of men were leaving their pits for better paid and safer jobs. The Welsh miner-author B.L. Coombes spoke for many miners in his writings at this time, though his feature in Picture Post calling for more young miners was published just after the Government had introduced an option for young conscripts to go into mines rather than the Armed Forces, a strategy that became far more effective when a balloted (or Bevin Boy) system was introduced:
Last week, outside our colliery, I saw a poster placed there by the Ministry of Fuel and Power. It showed a soldier striding over some conquered country, and on it was an appeal: ‘We need coal to help us. We’ll do the fighting if you’ll get the coal.’ That pictured face had a resemblance to many of the lads who went to the Army from these areas, and they are too near akin for us to have any intention of letting them down. We know that, after all the the theorists have finished, it will be the man in khaki who will have to do the fighting. We know also that, after all the armchair suggestions have tired, it will be left for the man with the mandrel and the dust-grimed face to get the coal… What we do feel is that for your sake, for our sake, for our country’s sake, mining must go on. Its man-power is draining away at a rate of nearly 30,000 a year. Young men and boys must come to replace them, and they must be trained before it is too late.
Even before the outbreak of war hundreds of miners were leaving the industry, some joining the Armed Forces, and others were soon drafted into the Territorials or New Militia. But the scale of recruitment was far more limited and subdued compared to 1914–16. And yet, despite the complex reserved status of coalmining a significant number of mineworkers simply handed in their notice and joined the military or civil defence service – or munitions: as many as 27,000 within two weeks of the declaration of war in 1939. My uncle, Lawrence Elliott, left the pit for the Army but spent most of the war as a prisoner of war. His younger brother, my father Fred Elliott, stayed at his colliery and, like many of his mates, served in the Home Guard. My mother, Agnes Elliott née Stone, was one of many thousands of young women in mining communities who joined the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes), working in a canteen serving tea and meals to billeted soldiers for the duration of the war.
Some coalfield areas, such as the North East and south Wales, suffered badly due to the war, the air raids and shipping disruptions resulting in pits working part-time or closed. Miners’ pay was so depressed that they were ranked 81st (out of 100) in the industrial wages league. In 1938 the average miner only received £2 15s 9d a week, way below most industrial occupations.
Access to your ancestor’s Second World War service records are only available through the personnel themselves or their proven next-of-kin (see one or more of the research guides below and/or use one of the many available online via national and regional record offices/archives [see regional and national research sections of this book]; and also for casualty and operational records Local newspapers are an invaluable source of information on Army personnel, local events, casualties and gallantry awards (see illustrated example to Corporal Waters, page 133).
A ‘regular’ soldier, Corporal T. Waters, an ex-Cadeby Main miner, was ‘decorated in the field’ by General Montgomery in 1944. Details of his gallantry duly featured in the South Yorkshire Times, 22 July 1944. South Yorkshire Times.
‘Killed in action’
Between 1939 and 1945 almost 5,400 miners were killed at work and 205,000 injured. Many thousands more died from respiratory diseases.
The ‘underground front’: Bevin Boys
The workforce in the coal industry declined from 784,000 at the start of the war to 690,000 in the spring of 1941. The ‘coal crisis’ as it became known resulted in the Essential Work (Coal Mining Industry) Order of 15 May 1941 whereby miners were not allowed to leave or be dismissed from their employment without the permission of a National Service office. In effect miners were now tied to their mines by law.
Your ancestor may have been one of about 48,000 recruits conscripted into the coalmining industry rather than the Armed Forces. Bevin appealed for men to return to the pits, including those that had joined the forces, as a workforce of 720,000 was thought to be essential for wartime coal production. But production continued to decline, not helped by absenteeism and ad hoc strikes. In September 1942 men under the age of 25 registered for military service were given the option of underground work in the mines. Hardly surprisingly, this scheme resulted in fewer than 3,000 ‘optants’ entering mining by June 1943, far short of what was needed.
Compulsory recruitment then began. Men aged 18–25, on being available for call-up, were chosen by ballot for pit work, the first draw – for one conscript in ten – taking place on 14 December 1943. The ‘lucky’ ones became known as ‘Bevin Boys’ after the speech made by Ernest Bevin MP when he announced the scheme.
Joe Hartley (b.1925) Bevin Boy
Joe was a Yorkshire Bevin Boy conscript and was instructed to report for training at Askern Colliery. Here are his recollections:
I was shocked when I found out. There were lads from all over the country, including Cockneys. We had a week underground and were shown how to couple a tub safely and how to gear a horse up for pony driving. We also did physical training, stripping down to shorts and vests and ran around the countryside and did marching, wearing pit boots. I remember the Bevin Boys’ anthem, which went something like:
We had to join up
We had to join up
We had to join up old Bevin’s army
Fifty bob a week
Wife and kids to keep
Hob-nailed boots and blisters on your feet
We had to join up
We had to join up
We had to join old Bevin’s army
If it wasn’t for war
We’d be where we were before
Old Bevin you’re barmy!
I was sent to Darfield Main but passed three pits on the way there! I was 17 and the only Bevin Boy. I worked in the pit bottom, by the chair, dealing with full and empty tubs and helped with the haulage. I wore an old boiler suit. One lad came wearing a butcher’s smock! He would feed the ponies with pickled onions from his pocket. There were no pit baths so I came home in my pit muck. When you travelled on the pit bus you got some looks; passengers wanted to keep well away.
(Interviewed by the author)
After the end of the war Joe decided to stay in mining, working at Manvers Main Colliery where he progressed to be a senior overman, retiring in 1983.
By the end of the war the Bevin Boys scheme had provided about 21,800 young men for the mines. The much-quoted figure of 48,000 includes the conscripted ‘optants’ referred to above, taken over a slightly longer period, to 1948. A small number of conscripts refused to be part of the scheme. Within months over a hundred objectors were prosecuted and thirty-two were sent to prisons, though nineteen of these were released when they changed their views, reluctantly joining the industry.
The conscripts were dispatched to one of several regional training collieries for a few weeks’ basic training, living in a hostel or in lodgings; and then dispatched to a local pit. Fortunately recorded memories and writings of the Bevin Boys provide us with many first-hand accounts of the training process and the understandable shock of compulsory pit-work in the very worst circumstances imaginable.
Former Bevin Boy Joe Hartley had mixed memories of his wartime mining experiences, but stayed in the industry, becoming a senior official at Manvers Main.
On commencement of work the Bevin Boys were given overalls, a safety helmet and working boots, but they had to buy their own tools. Work-wise, they were mainly employed on haulage roads, though some helped colliers on coalfaces and even hewed coal. The loading and transporting of coal and materials was far from easy work, in fact it was one of the most arduous and most dangerous jobs in mining, and especially so for beginners. Furthermore, by all accounts they were not always well regarded by other miners, for a variety of reasons. Although some, like Joe Hartley, stayed in mining after the war, the majority of miner-conscripts were pleased to leave the industry.
Mel Harris, south Wales Bevin Boy, 1944–47
Mel describes his work alongside a collier at Cwm Colliery:
As the days passed, I watched him him at work, noticing how neat and careful he was in everything he did … Although working hard with Mr David – never called him anything else – my feeling about coal mining did not change. All my friends wore the uniform of one of the Forces … whilst I was in civilian clothes with no uniform except boots and helmet. I was on meagre rations, a very small wage and open to accusations of cowardice.
(Extracted courtesy of GLO, Big Pit/Museum of Wales magazine, 2005)
Following various campaigns, Bevin Boys were deservedly recognised for their war service, albeit decades later. It was not until 1995 that the ‘forgotten conscripts’ were officially acknowledged in a speech made by HM The Queen, but they had to wait a further nine years to be allowed to march in the Remembrance Day service at Whitehall. In 2007, Bevin Boys were allowed to apply for a specially commissioned commemorative badge produced by the Government in honour of their war service. A moving ceremony took place on 7 May 2013 at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire when a tearful Countess of Wessex unveiled a memorial to the ‘forgotten heroes’ of the war, assisted by Harry Parkes and a few of his surviving Bevin Boy colleagues. Sadly, the official Bevin Boys Association (www.bevinboysassociation.co.uk) has a fast dwindling membership, as most of the veterans are in now in their mid-to-late 80s.
Miners’ opinions (Penallta Colliery, south Wales)
These Bevin Boys, they didn’t trouble, not one bit. They would rather have gone to the services. (Ivor Davies)
We had quite a number of them. A lot of them to be honest were a waste of time. You’d put a shovel in their hand and and it was like a snake in their hand. But some of them were all right. Some even stopped there after the war. (Vince Court)
(GLO, Big Pit/Museum of Wales magazine, 2005.)
Research Tips
If your ancestor was a Bevin Boy or was a miner who trained or worked with Bevin Boys it is well worth accessing one or more of the excellent published autobiographical accounts (see below for several recent titles). Other useful sources included deposited and displayed material (including some recordings) held at the national mining museums. In 2005, the Museum of Wales and Big Pit published an excellent collection of Bevin Boy information and related reminiscences in their GLO magazine, well worth reading for other coalfield areas too. For the Midlands area the Imperial War Museum has a complete list of ballotees and optants (1943–47), as well as related documents/photographs: Dept. Documents [Misc. 2834]. As you would expect primary material is also lodged in The National Archives: keyword ‘Bevin Boys’ in your search.
Selective sources and further reading
Books
Sydney Allinson, The Bantams (Pen and Sword Books, 2009)
Alexander Barrie, War Underground. The Tunneììers of the Great War (Tom Donovan, 1961)
Peter Barton, Peter Doyle and Johan Vanderwalle, Beneath Flanders Fields. The Tunnellers’ War (Spellmount, 2004)
Richard Ba×ell, British Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War: The British Battalion in the International Brigades, 1936–1939 (Routledge, 2004)
Simon Fowler, Tracing Your Army Ancestors (Pen and Sword Books, 2013)
Simon Fowler, Tracing Your First World War Ancestors (Pen & Sword Books, 2013)
Hywel Francis, Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War (Lawrence and Wishart, 1984)
Mike Gomersall, Thomas Bryan. The Forgotten V.C. of Whitwood & Castleford (Mike Gomersall, 2012)
Tom Hickman, Called Up, Sent Down. The Bevin Boys’ War (The History Press, 2008)
Derek Hollows, As I Recall. A Bevin Boy’s Story (Brewin Books, 2007)
Philip Robinson and Nigel Cave, The Underground War. Volume 1: Vimy Ridge to Arras (Pen & Sword Books, 2011)
Reg Taylor, Bevin Boy. A Reluctant Miner (Athena Press, 2004)
Warwick Taylor, The Forgotten Conscript. A History of the Bevin Boys (Pentland Press, 1995 & 2003)
Film/DVDs
Peter Barton, The Somme: Secret Tunnel Wars (BBC4 documentary, 2013)
Miners at War (Puddle Productions DVD)
One of Our Mines is Missing! (Durand Group’s investigation of the Broadmarsh and Durand mines (Fougasse Films)
The First World War From Above (BBC documentary)
Their Finest Hour. The Underground Army [Bevin Boys DVD]
Internet
www.victoriacross.org.uk (Ian Stewart’s VC burial locations listings)
Military medals/records can be searched via Ancestry.com
Tours
There are many Battlefield Tours available for you to see places where your miner-ancestor may have served; just use your search engine to access up-to-date details. Some recommended sites (and advice) relating to the tunnellers are well described in Robinson and Cave’s book (cited above).