Lest It Be Forgotten After I Am Gone: The Adolescent Years - 7
Raymon Benedyk was drafted into the coal mines in 1944, becoming a Bevin Boy.
To read earlier chapters of Raymon's absorbing autobiography please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/lest_it_be_forgotten_after_i_am_gone/
In December 1944 my call-up papers arrived and I was at first shocked to find that I was being drafted into the coalmines, to be one of those young lads expected to replace coalminers who had been conscripted into the forces. My years in the Air Training Corps had been a waste so it appeared, and I was instructed to report at King Cross railway station on January 8th 1945 at a given time to meet with a group of other young men from London, to make our way to Doncaster and whatever we found. It was an exciting experience for me, being away from home on my own for the first time, and we were billeted in a specially built hostel of tin roofed huts with hundreds others in the same boat.
In many ways it was not too unpleasant and, other than the extreme cold of the first winter when the showers, if they worked, only giving tepid water and the toilet seats having hoar frost on them, which definitely needed removal before use, we soon learned to live with it.
We were called 'Bevin Boys' after Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour and National Service who instigated the scheme. For the first two weeks we were on a general 'toughening up' programme on the surface, which was no problem for me as I was quite 'tough' already. We also made several visits to a 'training pit' where everything was pristine, bright, clean and new. This, I thought, was going to be easy. How wrong could I get!
After the weeks of basic training, we were each assigned to an actual working pit, and there our learning about mining work and miners became real. We had been training in a 'fool's paradise' before. Now we began to experience the rough and tumble of real underground working in all its reality with bruised knees and shoulders, knocked heads and scuffed knuckles. I suppose I was fortunate in that other than a few of these, I received no broken bones or serious hurt that required hospitalisation. Others 'Boys' did, and a few were killed. It was a dangerous life in which we found ourselves and things did happen.
When on May 8th 1945 and the end of the war was announced, I was fortunate enough to be on leave in London, able to enjoy Victory in Europe day with all the ensuing mass celebrations and parades. I was in the Mall at Buckingham Palace with many tens of thousands of joyous people when the Royal family and Winston Churchill came out on 'the' balcony to show their appreciation at the singing of the National Anthem, "Land of Hope and Glory", and "There'll always be an England". What a night!
