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Bevin Boys Association is trying to trace all 48,000 Bevin Boy. They are, at last, to be recognised and awarded a commemorative badge. |
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Bevin Boys are often known as the "Forgotten Conscripts"
Around 48,000 young men, who would otherwise have been conscripted into the armed forces, were sent underground between 1943 and 1948.
Bevin Boys Marching To The Cenotaph November 2006
The Bevin Boys Association
c/o Warwick H. Taylor MBE
'Little Barn'
1 Rundlestone Court
Poundbury
Dorchester
DT1 3TN
Dorset
England
Memories of The Mine
by Roger Woddis
The call of England, home and beauty
Led him to labour underground;
Young as he was, he did his duty,
Unsung, unhonoured and uncrowned.
No bugle summoned him to glory,
Nor did he hear the cannon's roar;
The hero of a different story,
He fought another kind of war.
Today the memory still lingers
Of fortune lying on the mat,
The day that fate put forth her fingers
And drew his number from the hat.
And then, beyond the weeks of training,
The pit-cage dropping like a stone,
The ache, with nerve and muscle straining,
That penetrated to the bone.
Though forty years have left him older,
There's no forgetting even now
When danger hovered at his shoulder
And there was sweat upon his brow.
