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This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from Bracknell Library on behalf of Aidan Redford and has been added to the site with his permission. Aidan fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I was a coal miner in Ashington in Northumberland and I was 16 at the time. It was 1942. I used to go the pit and I had to cross a square diagonally. On one side was a warehouse, on the second side was the Salvation Army citadel. The third side was the Primitive Methodist chapel and the forth side was a row of flats. I went there on night shift. One day I was crossing the square going to work; it was empty as usual. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.

When I came back off shift at 2 o’clock in the morning, it was pitch black. You couldn’t see your hand in-front of your face. At the time I had a mortal fear of the dark consequently I used to thump my hob-nailed boots violently down on the ground at each step to let everybody know that I was ten feet tall and weighed twenty-stone! I entered the square as usual, but suddenly felt a peculiar sensation in the region of my abdomen and stopped dead. Putting my hand into the region of this sensation, I grasped the point of a bayonet at which time a voice said ‘Halt, who goes there?’

During the night the army had commandeered the Salvation Army chapel and the PM chapel where they billeted soldiers and the square they used as a vehicle park. I didn’t know this hence my surprise! I didn’t know what to say back to the soldier; eventually I managed to reply ‘Friend’ which seemed to be the right answer. He said back to me ‘Advance friend and be recognised’. If I had taken one step towards him I would have been impaled on the end of his bayonet! So I said ‘Take the bayonet away and then I’ll move.’ Which he did and I went home no longer afraid of the dark!

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