War underground
Subtitle: memoirs of a Bevin Boy in the South Wales coalfield
By: Michael Edmonds ; edited by Peter Wakelin ; foreword by Kim Howells
Contributors: Wakelin, Peter
Series: Publications of the South Wales Record Society -- no. 26
Publisher: South Wales Record Society
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Newport
Language: eng
Number of pages: 127
ISBN-13: 9780955338762
Subjects: Coal miners; Biography; Coal mines and mining; Service, Compulsory non-military; World War, 1939-1945; Conscript labor
Description: Michael Edmonds was born in Dorset in 1926. His first-hand account describes the experiences of one of the 47,000 young men plucked from their everyday lives to go underground as Bevin Boys during the Second World War. Michael Edmonds kept notes from when he arrived in South Wales, aged 18, through Nationalization in 1947 to his return to civilian life. He wrote his insightful, informative and often moving memoirs to set down the respect he felt for the miners and convey it to the wider world. But as he began his postwar careers as an artist and architect his text was forgotten, and it is only now that it is available for all to read.