No Medals: Conscripted for Coal Mining

By Jack Agnew

During the Second World War Britain was so short of vital coal supplies and coal miners that the authorities offered ex miners in the armed forces the opportunity to return to mining. This offer was a failure, so conscription was introduced. At 18, fit young men, chosen by ballot, were conscripted for underground coal mining and became what were known as Bevin Boys, named after Ernest Bevin the Minister of Labourwhose scheme it was.Most of the conscriptshad never seen a coal mine. This novel is based on the experience of one of them. Set in a Britain drained by war, it reflects the class attitudes of the period.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 31, 2007
• ISBN: 9781467020343

Jack Agnew

Former documentary film maker and college lecturer and now the author of both non fiction and fiction, he has written for both adults and children. His short stories and articles have been widely published and broadcast. THE TRIANGLE is his second published novel.

Book preview

Chapter One. 

Martin had been expecting the coarse brown envelope which fell onto the doormat. He went along the narrow hallway of their semi and picked it up. Drying her hands on a tea towel, his mother came out of the kitchen.

‘ O. H. M. S.’ he read,’ It’s my call up papers all right.’

‘ Well, what’s it say, then? Is it from the Air Force like you wanted?’

‘I don’t know, Mum. It’s such a lot of gobbledygook.’ Martin’s eyes skimmed across the closely printed words.

‘ ‘It’s from The National Service Officer ,.Ministry of Labour and National Service,’ he read., ’Direction issued under regulation 58 A of the Defence Regulations 1939.’

‘Get on with it, then.’

‘It says here, I the undersigned, a National Service Officer within the meaning of the said Regulations, do hereby direct you to perform the services specified by the Schedule hereto (see overleaf) being services which, in my opinion, you are capable of performing. Dated twelfth of March 1944.’

‘Never mind all that, what’s it say on the other side?’

Hurriedly turning the letter over, Martin stood with his mouth open, his expression frozen in incredulity.

Taking the letter from him, his mother put her hand to her lips and breathed ‘Oh no ! Underground coal mining.’

Then turning to look up the stairs, she shouted,

‘Bert, they want our Martin for one of them Bevin Boys.’

Upstairs the toilet flushed.

‘What’s that?’

Martin’s father limped downstairs, pulling his braces over his shoulders.

‘Bert, it’s his call up papers and they want him for the coal mines.’

‘Well there’s a turn up for the book. The mines?’ Mr Collins grimaced and took the letter.

Martin nodded.

‘ The bloody coal mines, sod it. Anything would have been better than that.’

‘There’s no need for language, I’m sure.’ rebuked his mother.

‘He’ll get plenty of that where he’s going.’ her husband countered,’ Does it say where?’

Mrs Collins said,

‘There must be some mines that are not too far away from here, Bert.’

Rolling his eyes to the ceiling,her husband groaned,

‘Don’t talk so daft, Renie. The nearest ones to here would be in Kent, and what with the flying bombs coming down all over the place , God knows what it’ll be like down there. Can’t be the healthiest place to be at the moment. No, I reckon it will be Nottingham or Derby or Yorkshire, perhaps Wales, somewhere like that. Come to think of it, at least you’d be away from the doodlebugs.’ He handed the letter back and Martin started reading again.

‘It says there’s a fine of a hundred pounds and a three month prison sentence if I don’t go. And any person failing to comply after such a further conviction is to be fined five pounds a day. That’s more than my week’s wages every blinking day !’

Seeing his son’s face, Martin’s father said,

‘Well, look on the bright side. At least it can’t be as bad as the Somme.’ He tapped his leg. ‘I wouldn’t want you carrying shrapnel souvenirs about in you like I do. You might not get any medals or fancy uniforms to go swaggering about in, but like I always say the military is nothing more than death in fancy dress. That’s what it is.’

Mrs Collins looked over her shoulder as she retreated to the kitchen, saying,

‘Oh ! We’ve heard all that before Bert’

‘But Dad, why me?’

‘Well, this daft lot in Parliament have called up all the fit young miners for the forces and now they discover they need the coal and there’s no one to dig it. They gave miners in the Army the option of going back to the mines,. but they wont go. They’re not daft. They know they’ve got a better life in the Army, so now it’s come to conscription. The whole country runs on coal. Gas, electric. trains, heating, the lot. No coal, no steel. No steel, no guns or tanks. Politicians? Stupid if you ask me.’

‘I know, but why me? After all, I am in the Air Training Corps’, You’d think that would make a difference.

‘Now come and get your breakfasts or you’ll both be late for work.’ came Mrs Collins’ shrill voice from the kitchen,

‘I’ve fried up some Spam with that powdered egg. You like that.’

Chapter Two 

When Martin changed buses at the Met Station, he waited for some time before the bus moved off, but it did not take its usual route. Surprised, Martin asked the conductress,

‘What’s up? Where are we going?’

Standing at the top of the stairs she said,

‘Are you the only one up here? In solitary splendour, eh? It’s a bit of a detour.’

Her voice sounded educated, but not too posh. She was nice looking, too, but too old for him. Thirty perhaps. Probably been directed to ‘do her bit’ for the war effort on the buses.

Martin said,

‘Toxeth’.

She smiled and said,

‘They hit the bridge over the railway last night. What a mess. So we’re going round through a detour’ She handed him his ticket.

‘You’ll be all right though. You’ll get a nice long ride for your money. There’ll be be another bus back to Toxeth way.’ Catching Martin’s anxious look as he glanced at his change, she mothered him with, ‘ Just show them your ticket and explain, you’ll be all right.’ And going to the front of the bus she wound the handle to change the destination panel.

Looking down at the drab shop fronts, Martin remembered how they had once been, but now the gleaming lights and plate glass windows had gone. They were mostly boarded up, although a few now had tiny windows set in absurd little wooden frames. The shops had practically nothing to sell, anyway. The bus passed a coal merchant’s with a huge block of coal outside, and Martin thought about this morning’s letter. He knew practically nothing of coalmines. He had never even seen one. His only images of them were borrowed from the cinema and not many films were about mines. It seemed to be a subject the cinemas avoided. Too grim for the inhabitants of the neat suburban semis and, he supposed, not glamorous and escapist enough for the pitmen and their wives living in dreary colliery rows. Passing a cinema poster he tried to imagine what it would be like if instead of ‘Putting on the Ritz’ Fred Astaire was in ‘Putting on the Pits’. He smiled for a moment, but now, in the cinema of his mind he saw headstocks, their wheels stationary as steam sirens shrieked. Women, with black shawls drawn around their anguished faces, stood penned behind iron colliery gates. Sweaty ragged men, terrifyingly masked and weighed down by gas cylinders, carried stretchers as they prepared to sacrifice themselves for their mates trapped below. Heads shook slowly,

‘How many still down?’

‘Not much hope. Only about an hour’s air left.’

The conductress walked past him, saying,

‘Cheer up. It may never happen.’

The most realistic and frightening images had been in a very early German sound film. it had been shown at the local Labour Hall. You never got stuff like that at the Odeon. Its internationalist message was about workers uniting. German miners came to rescue Frenchmen trapped underground. Defying the authorities they crashed through the frontier posts with their rescue lorries. But, God, it was frightening. Pit props, like some sparse, stunted forest, splintered and creaked. Slabs of stone slid down making impenetrable shutters. A torrent of water suddenly burst out of the dank stonework. Half naked men crawled through a clinging scum of coaldust, struggling for air above the deepening water. Rescuers listened to the feint, helpless tapping, their ears against twisted metal pipes.What had it been called? ‘Kammeradschaft?’. Not knowing any German, Martin wondered, if the name was something to do with a pit shaft, or was it German for comradeship?

Suddenly the bus lurched and the windows at the front crashed in. The noise from outside was deafening. Martin dropped to the floor. For a moment it seemed the double decker would topple over, but it stopped and somehow righted itself. Then came another indescribably loud, ripping sound, like a huge piece of cloth being torn or an express train suddenly approaching. Martin crawled to the stairs. The bus was still swaying and he could see clouds of dust outside.

On the pavement lay the conductress. Her smart grey uniform had huge patches of red on it. Long, knife like slivers of glass pierced her body and legs. Inside the bus was a shambles. Some passengers sat silent and dreadfully still. Others, also stabbed by cruel glass arrows, screamed, afraid or unable to move.

Martin turned away and, steadying himself, held the rail beside the bus’s platform, but fell to the pavement. He lay there for a while retching repeatedly. Suddenly he vomited.

‘You all right, son?’

Martin turned, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. A steel helmetted man in a blue boiler suit stood with his back pressed against the bus for support. He wept and cursed alternately.

‘The bastards. Bleeding rockets. Bloody V Twos. You can’t hear these sods coming. You hear them arrive after they’ve exploded.’ He suddenly burst into tears. ‘You should see the poor buggers in there. Having breakfast they was, a British Restaurant.’ He waved his arm feebly toward a pile of twisted metal, rubble and broken glass. ‘Didn’t have a bleedin’ chance, did they?’ he sobbed.

Chapter Three 

‘You’re late, Martin.’ said Mr Wharton, without any malice. ‘I’ve done your sulphur determinations. B J is showing the valveman the ropes in the catalytic plant. He wants to talk to you about that and the benzol slip when he comes back. Can you get on with those gas oil samples?’

‘I had to walk about three miles. No bus. They said there’d be a connection but there wasn’t.’ Martin picked up the grimy bottles.

‘Got a nice breath of fresh air, though. God, I needed it.’

Tugging at his bristly moustache, Mr Wharton ignored Martin’s remark and peered at a burette, complaining,

‘Someone’s been peeing in this indicator. Unspecified crapaloids. Can’t get two consecutive reading to agree

In his forties, Mr Wharton was the mainstay of the lab. He bustled about with a clip board, trying to look efficient. Old B J might be the boss, but everyone knew he had really been put out to grass at the tiny works, which even he sometimes liked to refer to as ‘toy town works’.

‘V Two got the bridge.’ muttered Mr Wharton, still peering at the burette, ‘That was a lucky one. They are trying to keep quiet about them, so people won’t panic. Our Emergency Repair lot went out to it. Ruptured main on fire. Real Brock’s benefit. Arms and legs lying about according to them.’Martin sat down. He suddenly felt ill.

‘You missed all the excitement this morning. Doodlebug flew past number five holder just as B. J. and I were coming through the gates. Good job there’s no gas in it. Chuntered past the second gantry up. Went beetling on and managed to miss it. You could have cut washers off my sphincter. We all just stood there gawping at it, like a bunch of bunnies. Too surprised to take cover. I say, you look like death warmed up.’

‘I’m OK.’

Mr Wharton walked over to Martin, put down his clip board and picked up a mug.

‘Here, have my coffee, I’ve not touched it yet. Come on old scout. There, I’ve put another spoonful of sugar in. That should set you up.’ He stirred the coffee and passed it to Martin.’Here, drink up. I’ll put you on a bus home if you want.’

‘No thanks, I’ll be alright.’

‘Was it what I said about the V