If he’d had it his way, Warwick Taylor would have been flying high with the Royal Air Force, but a simple matter of fate sent him elsewhere.
"Originally, you could choose to be a Bevin Boy, but by the end of 1943 they weren’t getting enough volunteers, so that was when they bought in the ballot system."
"It was done by drawing a number out of a hat every fortnight, anything, nought to nine," he explains. "If that number coincided with the last digit of your registration number, then you went down the mines, and it was number nine – my number – during the fortnight that I went to register. It was a lottery that you just didn’t want to win."
Eighteen-year-old Warwick, who had been a budding air cadet, waved goodbye to his RAF career hopes, and boarded a train for Oakdale in South Wales, where he would see out his wartime service days down a mine shaft.
"The first time I went down the mines they let us drop at 70ft per second. The pressure on the ears was awful, and many lads got nosebleeds. The depth was nearly 3,000ft – that’s a long way down. I wanted to be 3,000ft up in the air, not down there."
The conditions down in the mines were harsh. "I’d only been there for six weeks when I became very ill. I couldn’t eat and kept being sick. So they sent me to hospital in the back of a taxi. I was slipping in and out of consciousness, and as I started to come round there was a consultant peering over me. He said, ‘this man’s got double pneumonia’.
"It was working in cold water up to my ankles that finally did it. It left me with a scar on my lung, which still affects me today."
After World War II ended, Warwick finally got to follow his original ambition and went into the RAF – an experience that made him realise just how tough he and his Bevin Boy colleagues had it working underground.
"Working in a mine is not a soft option. Firedamp or methane gas is the worst enemy, the slightest spark and that’s it. And, of course, lots of accidents did happen, particularly to the hands."
Despite the hazards they faced in their wartime work, the Bevin Boys have spent the following decades fighting, not just for recognition, but for the public’s respect.
"There’s always this awful stigma where members of the public think the Bevin Boys went to the mines because they were conscientious objectors – that wasn’t the case at all. Besides, a conscientious objector could still be sent to the Army, on medical duties, for example.
"We have felt there’s been an injustice actually – we should have got the Defence Medal. We were the last in the line to be recognised. Got there in the end though, didn’t we?"
