"BEVIN'S BOYS"

of the audience, which should have been concentrated on the dramatic intensity of this supreme moment, were diverted to the interesting speculation as to whether Pryer would or would not break his neck.

However, it would be ungracious to dwell on minor blemishes. The play as a whole was a decided success, and Middleton and his cast are to be heartily congratulated. Much hard work and enthusiasm went to the making of this production which thoroughly deserved the applause which it received.

" WE BEVIN BOYS"

By J. M. BANISTER.

It was my somewhat doubtful privilege to be the first, and so far as I know, the only O.P. to date, to join.the ranks of the Noble Army of Bevin Boys. However, as others still at school may have to follow me, perhaps a short account of my experiences might be of interest.

My registration number ended in the figure nine, one of the two figures drawn in the first ballot, and I received a note shortly before Christmas in 1943, telling me my number was up, so to speak.

One month later, I reported to Askem Main Training Centre, near Doncaster, on a very wet and miserable January afternoon, and nothing is more depressing than a piwillage in the rain. Fortunately, I had been able to pre-arrange a billet before going, and so was certain at least of a good and comfortable home.

The following day, I began training. Although the scheme had already been in operation for four weeks, the general air of complacent muddle which reigned over the centre gave one the impression that it had been begun in a great hurry the day before.

However, organisation improved daily, although it never reached a really satisfactory pitch. Lectures and P.T. classes were fairly well arranged, but provisions for underground and surface training were always entirely inadequate. The lecturers were all mining men, and though they no doubt knew their jobs, some clearly had difficulty in imparting their knowledge to the trainees, who were, in any case, for the most part truculent and in no mood to receive any information on the now abhorred subject of mining.

The P.T. was run by ex-army instructors, and was very reminiscent of periods with the Sergeant-Major, complete with "Screaming Bombs" and "Small Groups."

Underground work, which occupied about fifty per cent. of our time, consisted mostly of waiting for something to happen, and when it did, it comprised, in the main, work with a pick and shovel preparing the pit (a disused section of the colliery) for a training ground, ostensibly for ourselves, but in point of fact for our successors. I only hope the future trainees reaped the benefit of our unwilling labours.

Surface work invariably consisted of labouring jobs such as tidying up the sidings or shovelling "muck" into trucks. Our complaints that this kind of work was hardly worthy of the term "coalmining training," were met with the excuse that we could not see the pit in operation as it would interfere with production.

During the whole of my period of training, I never saw the coal-face and I never saw any kind of haulage in action. Any knowledge I gained was derived almost entirely from the lecture-room and hence was purely theoretical. If our visits underground had any real value at all it lay in the fact that we became used to the atmosphere of the underworld, and that we absorbed, at least in part, the multitudinous safety precautions which were continually being hammered into us.

When we left the centre a month after our arrival, we all•felt that much time had been wasted which could with proper organisation and forethought have been more profitably spent. I myself was posted to Bedlington Colliery in Northumberland, and went there in February, with very mixed feelings.