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Both of my grandfathers were miners before the war but while one went away to fight the other was forced to work in the mines.

My father’s dad, Martin Baird, won medals and commendations throughout his time as a tank driver in El Alemein, Sicily, Italy and Normandy but on his return refused to wear his medals out of respect to those who had been forced to work down the pits. He said he didn’t want to ‘boast’ about what he had done while men had worked and died at home.

Martin had been inseparable from his brother George but earlier in 1939 at Upton Colliery, West Yorkshire, George was tragically killed in a roof fall. Martin couldn’t bear to sit at the same table as his family and see the empty seat left by George so he decided to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and join the forces in his home country — Scotland.

He joined the Highland Light Infantry in the middle of 1939 which was promptly ‘mechanised’ and he was trained as a tank driver. None of the family know anything about his war, other than his life was saved in Italy when he was cut off from returning to base to do a recon job by a German bombardment. The driver who went in his place drove over a landmine killing himself and an officer.

He lost some friends in Normandy in a machine gun attack which saw him wounded out of the war.

Back in Yorkshire my maternal grandfather, Wilf Rowley, was a colliery surface worker at Frickley pit. On the outbreak of war, he and a friend decided they would get out of the pit and join up.

They had to run nine miles cross country to the nearest recruiting station — Barnsley — but when the two arrived they were confronted by the pit manager stood by his car, with the recruiting sergeant, pointing out ‘his’ men. My grandfather spent the rest of his life working at Frickley.

There was some resentment from some of the local Bevin Boys and those who were parachuted in to the fill the gaps. While a lot of the locals had tried their hardest to get to fight, some thought others had dodged their duty by volunteering to work at home. In a silent protest about not being able to join the war one man took to wearing an army beret and combat jacket — and continued to do so well into the 1980s.

For those left behind time grinded on very slowly — a highlight was taking a London girl as an evacuee who is still a very close friend of the family.

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