One of our Bevin Boys

My Story starts with me leaving school at 14 and going to the wombwell main colliery to seek a job, this was at Easter time,got set on and I was on the surface screens for about a year and then decided to ask to go down the mine after doing a stint on the surface screens which was quite a dirty cold job and pay was £1-25pence in old money, I asked to go down the mine to get away from daily routine.
My first day to go down the shaft was a little frightening to say the least,but you got on with the rest of the chaps, with your Ceag lamp which you hung it on to you belt,this was the type before Cap Lamp types were invented,you got the lamp when you asked for your Check Disc and shouted your Number to the chaps giving the lamps out in the lamproom, you were frisked on the pithead for fags/ matches and the you went in line to be loaded onto the Chair this one we were to go down with was a 3 deck with say 8/10 people on each deck and the shaft at this pitwas 525yds deep so the chair could go at a fair speed as far asdecending goes, the winder chappie has a dial to work the depth and the speed of decent and must adhere to this at all times. On landing below you all have to stand in you groups in the areas of the districts that you work in and be checked in by the Deputies or Overman,to allocated a working party in their respective Districts.
This was 1944 when I made my choice to go down the pit and my first job was to be in the top archway assembling empty tubs to be sent into the workings to be filled with the coal from the coalface and then they would be sent back on the or by the endless haulage which was a steel wisted endless cable which is called a Rope and the full trains of tubs are attached to this by linked chains in say twenty tubs and are checked through the roadways by haulage hands and in those days if you got all the coal back to the pit bottom you could sometimes be allowed out of the pit early say 1hr our less and that was an incentive to get going and this also applied to the colliers who were hewing the coal at the face some chaps could fill-off in about 4 to 5 hrs so coming back out by 11.30 to 12pm.
Having been at my job for about 6 mths it came to pass that we were getting some Bevin Boys who had lost out in trying to join the forces, to go to fight the war in Europe and we got a chap from down South London area I think and his name was Terry and a nice lad too, he mixed in with us quite well and he had been trained for this kind of work at the Training Centres in the areas,anyway he was assigned to the Middle archway which loaded the full tubs on to the chair this was a very tricky area to be in as the chaps would be loading two decks from one landing and if my memory correct a small cage offset from the main rail run would have to load one to a small cage and the weight of the full one would bring up an empty tub to the middle deck and then round to the archways where I would be and also to the Low arch to supply another district.
Now this day we were about halfway through our shift when something dreadful happened to our Bevin Boy Terry, he got involved in a decking accident and I think he lost his head owing to some mixup with a full tub not loading correctly on to the chair sometimes the axil on the tubs get twisted as if being involved in a runaway,tubs going down drifts or steep inclines or the chains break allowing shunts to occur, and Terry I believe was stuggling to get the tub on to the chair,our to pull it back which is very difficult,also the onsetter can ring to the winding house to take the loaded chair to the top and not realise that any thing would be wrong in those days speed was the thing but also things can go wrong as this turned out to be, but poor Terry was no more, maybe if his name had not been selected to become a Bevin Boy he might have survived the war years and could be around us to-day but fate had him in it's clutches and he ended his stint as a Bevin Boy.
Maybe he has some relative who could put a name to Our Terry from down South and this could be added to this story of the wartime Bevin Boys doing their bit for the country instead of going to the front to shoot someone for their part in the German Regime to overpower the world and breed a super race for what I ask.

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