"When the war broke out I was on holiday with my parents down near Tenby. I came back home and I was given papers to go into the mines in Glossop, near Sheffield. I was in the draftsmen's union and found out that I shouldn't have been included in the ballot to be a Bevin Boy because I was in a reserved occupation, but it was too late by then - though they promised to get me out.

So I went up to the pits. We lived in huts like the Army did. At about four o'clock in the morning you'd be tramping over fields in the winter wearing big boots with steel caps. It was a bit grim because most of the lads wanted to get in to the forces. They used to get into all sorts of tricks to make themselves ill to get out of it, like eating carbolic soap.

I put in for a new medical - but passed grade one. I rang Molly, my fiancé at the time, and said it's jail next because I'm not going down the pit again.

But I was called up a few days later and told I wasn't fit for coal mining, but could go in the Army and left the mine that very afternoon.

It was quite an experience working underground and I'm glad I did it in a way, to know what the miners went through. I was a Bevin boy for six months in all, but that was enough."