“At first, going underground didn’t bother me,” says Phil Robinson, one of the 48,000 men conscripted into Britain’s collieries during the Second World War. “But it began to bother me when the seams were 2ft wide. Terrible, it was wet, for a start, and the work was hard. I was underground for eight hours at a stretch, a scrap of toast and marmalade in my pocket to keep me going. I hated it.”
Robinson, now 91, was one of the Bevin Boys, as they are known, men who, whatever their qualifications, training and ambitions, were forced to spend their war on the so-called “underground front”, bolstering coal production. Without a uniform or being formally acknowledged as servicemen, many were assumed...