by Joan Hart
‘I know. I thought I’d die laughing!’ I agreed, wiping the tears from my eyes.
Thankfully, Kev’s feet recovered and, thanks to a letter drafted to the NUM by the men, a new and better floor was laid in the showers. It was much easier to clean, which helped prevent the spread of infection. It was good news for Kev who, to my knowledge, never had use for a tube of ‘itchy fanny cream’ ever again.
16
Bentley Pit Disaster
I was in the middle of a dream when I heard the sound of a bell ringing in the distance. Bleary eyed, I pushed myself up onto my elbows and tried to focus. At first, I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming, but then I realised that it was the noise of the telephone ringing in the hallway. I checked the clock on the bedside cabinet. It was 4.50 a.m.
Who on earth would be calling at this time in the morning?
I heard Peter sigh. He pulled back the eiderdown, got to his feet, yawning and stretching, and padded out of the bedroom and into the hallway.
‘Hello,’ I heard his muffled reply. He must have been holding the receiver to his mouth in an attempt not to wake me. But it was too late; I was already wide awake, bolt upright in bed and listening to every word.
‘Who is it? Why, what’s happened? What? Right, I see. We’re on our way.’
It was an emergency at the pit – it had to be.
There was a slight clatter as Peter replaced the telephone and came back into the bedroom.
‘Joan, there’s been a paddy accident over at Bentley,’ he said. ‘You’re needed now.’
‘I thought so,’ I said, climbing out of bed. I wandered over to my chest of drawers and searched for clothes. Although I wondered what would face me at the pit, I wasn’t unduly worried because I’d been called to deal with paddy incidents before. Other than a few crushed limbs or missing fingers, they’d never really been all that serious, and they certainly weren’t anything I couldn’t handle. I pulled out some comfy underwear, a pair of jeans and a knitted jumper.
‘Ready?’ Peter asked a few moments later, the car keys already in his hand.
‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’ I yawned, wiping the sleep from my eyes.
It was the end of November, so it was freezing cold. Peter went out to the driveway to scrape ice from the car windscreen and warm up the engine. I pulled my winter coat from the peg, grabbed my house keys and locked the bungalow door, before dashing over to join Peter in the car.
‘Oh, it’s freezing,’ I complained, rubbing my ungloved hands together.
It was so cold that I could see my breath, even inside the confines of the car. I put a hand out and turned the heater to full blast. Our car was a cherry-red saloon we’d only had a few months – it was very reliable and the apple of Peter’s eye. As warm air began to flow inside, making it a little more bearable, he paused for a second and stared hard at the steering wheel.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said, a bemused look on his face. ‘I was just thinking. This old girl,’ he said, tapping the dashboard with his fingers, ‘she must know her way to Bentley. I reckon if we jumped in and said “Bentley pit”, she’d be able to drive herself there because we’ve been there so much recently.’
I threw my head back and laughed.
‘You are daft,’ I said, nudging his elbow. ‘Come on, they’ll be waiting for us.’
Peter took the back roads over to Bentley. The tarmac glistened in the moonlight as we sped along. The black road sparkled with its covering of ice, as though it had been sprinkled with glitter. I glanced out at the empty farmers’ fields around us. The trees were silhouetted as strange, tall, dark shapes in the distance. Everything was still and cold. Unlike us, other folk were still tucked up in their warm beds.
The journey only took 15 minutes, and as we pulled into Bentley village we made our way over to the colliery. I immediately spotted the medical centre because its windows were lit up against the inky blue sky. The rest of the pit was momentarily illuminated in the beam of headlights as we turned into the colliery yard. I’d expected to see men wandering around, but the place seemed eerily quiet. Peter and I climbed out of the car and wandered over towards the medical centre, where Ken, one of the senior MRAs, was waiting. Ken was a lovely man, a paternal type in his mid-fifties, who wore glasses and was tall and stocky. I’d met Ken many times before with Jenny, the sister at Bentley, and had always found him easy-going and pretty unflappable. But as soon as we entered the room, he stood up. Ken was normally a cheery fellow, but his face looked so solemn that I sensed it was no ordinary call-out.
‘Hello, Ken,’ I began, waiting for his face to soften – only it didn’t.
‘Oh, am I glad you’re here, Sister Hart. I’ve rung Jenny, and Dr Macdonald’s on his way. The switchboard has rung the other sisters, who are all on their way over too,’ he said, without pausing for breath.
‘For a paddy incident?’ I gasped.
Maybe I’d misunderstood?
‘Yes, but it’s way more serious than we first thought.’
‘Why? What do you mean?’ I said, trying to untangle my arms from the sleeves of my coat.
Ken gulped. ‘Because there are seven men dead.’
The words hung in the air as I stopped what I was doing and looked up at him in disbelief. ‘Dead?’
He nodded grimly.
I continued to stare, with my mouth slightly open, the shock registering on my face. We’d never had a disaster on this scale in the Doncaster area in the whole time I’d lived and worked here. I knew seven casualties in a pit village as small as Bentley would mean that each and every resident would know one of the deceased. This was unprecedented, but Ken hadn’t finished.
‘There are 19 serious casualties too,’ he added grimly.
Although my stomach had sunk to my knees, I knew there was no time to waste – there was work to be done.
‘Right,’ I said, rolling up the sleeves of my jumper. I headed over to the sink to wash my hands. ‘Let’s see what needs to be done.’
It’s hard to explain, but in situations like these the nursing instinct takes over and carries you through. With 19 serious casualties, and heaven knows how many walking wounded, I knew I had to get organised and quick. I went through all the drawers and cupboards, grabbing everything we’d need: bandages, dressings, slings and Entonox. I realised that the most serious cases would be treated using morphine from one of the locked boxes underground.
‘Labels,’ I suddenly remembered, turning to face Peter. ‘We need to make labels, so we can identify each patient and what injuries he’s sustained.’
‘Right, I can do that,’ he said, pulling up a chair.
Moments later, the phone rang; it was one of the underground first aiders. Normally, these men had nerves of steel and always kept their feelings in check, but this poor man sounded completely panic-stricken.
‘It’s really bad, Sister,’ he began, his voice quavering with emotion at the sheer scale of it. ‘How long is t’doctor gonna be? Is there anyone else coming down to help me?’
I desperately wanted to throw on my overalls and get down there, but I knew Dr Mac and Jenny were just minutes away. This was Jenny’s pit and she would want to take charge underground.
No, I reasoned. I’d be more use manning the medical centre with Ken, treating the wounded as they’re brought up to the pit top.
Sure enough, as soon as I put down the telephone I spotted car headlights and two vehicles swerved quickly into the yard outside. I heard the sound of car doors banging and saw Dr Mac and Jenny running over towards the pit shaft. The sun had yet to rise, and as I looked out of the window I realised just how unnaturally still the whole place seemed. Although the Mines Rescue Service had been alerted, most of the other men were either on their way or already underground trying to help out as best they could.
I looked over at Peter, who was busy cutting up labels out of cardboard.
‘It’s a bad one, Peter,’ I said, voicing my concerns al
oud.
Ken looked up as Peter nodded. No matter how hard I swallowed, I couldn’t stop the wave of nausea from rising up in the back of my throat.
Would we cope?
I felt rigid with fear, although I couldn’t let anyone see how scared I was. A few more minutes passed before other nurses started to arrive, including Sister Sarkar, the chief nursing officer. She took charge above ground and dispatched two nurses over to the medical centre to assist me. Three others remained with her at the shaft side, where she operated a triage system. She quickly assessed each miner as he was lifted to the pit top. Shocked and wounded men were sent over to me, while the more seriously injured were dispatched by ambulance to Doncaster Royal Infirmary.
The pit switchboard had already notified the police, who sent officers to man the pit gates and set up roadblocks so the injured could be transported as quickly as possible. But there were so many seriously wounded miners that each ambulance was forced to carry two men and a qualified sister on board to monitor them so that they didn’t die during the journey. It was a conveyor system, but it worked. Meanwhile, news filtered through that a temporary morgue had been set up in the pit’s garage. As soon as I heard, I felt physically sick.
Those poor, poor men.
Soon, a steady stream of wounded men had started to come through the doors of the medical centre, and, slowly, as each man recounted his story, we began to piece the whole picture together.
At approximately 4.45 a.m., just 5 minutes before I’d received the telephone call at home, a group of miners – around 65 in total – had finished their shift and climbed on board a paddy train. The men were taking a ride back to the pit bottom when the train suddenly veered out of control and crashed against the wall. The accident had killed seven miners. One lad – a coalface trainee – had only been 18 years old, while another had been three years older, aged just 21. The injured men had been travelling in the last two coaches of the train and were thrown out, hitting the rock side. Many had serious head injuries, while others had suffered deep lacerations to their torsos, arms and legs.
Jenny travelled underground with Dr Mac to deal with the most serious cases and identify the dead. It’s an unwritten rule that whoever arrives on the scene first takes charge of whatever needs to be done, and that person happened to be me. The men’s injuries were horrific. The run area for the paddy train is only very small, so when it had derailed the men had banged their heads against both walls and the ceiling. Thankfully, they’d all been wearing their helmets, so some had been protected from more severe injuries. However, others had ricocheted violently from one wall, losing their hard hats, to another, sustaining fatal injuries.
The timing had been terrible because, just as the train derailed at the pit bottom, the next shift of miners had arrived to start work. Miners had seen their colleagues fatally or seriously injured and had run over to help, so we not only had injured men to deal with, we also had to treat others for shock. With hordes of miners still waiting to be seen, Doncaster Royal Infirmary was put on red alert. I focused on what needed to be done and went into autopilot, treating the men in order of the severity of their injuries.
‘Here,’ I said, passing Peter a clipboard, paper and pen. ‘Keep a log of who has been brought up from underground. List their name, check number and whether or not they’ve been given morphine. That way, if anyone asks, we’ll know who’s gone where.’
‘Okay,’ Peter agreed, taking it from me.
I knew we needed to remain organised and keep a central log. Peter wrote the men’s details down onto individual labels, which he tied to their wrists using strips of bandage. Some of the miners were concussed, while others had drifted in and out of consciousness, so we needed to know who they were. The hospital also had to be clear about who had been given what medication. Besides head injuries and lacerations, some had sustained suspected fractures and required X-rays, while others had cuts that ran so deep they required sutures. Both groups had to be assessed and ferried to hospital, but only after the more serious cases, because those took absolute priority.
As the morning wore on, the pit became busier and busier as extra men were drafted in to help. While we worked away, tending to the injured, the police were frantically trying to keep the crowds under control outside. Worried families and friends vied for position at the pit gates, waiting for news of their loved ones. As the ambulances sped along neighbouring streets, news spread that there’d been a major incident at the pit, so more and more relatives turned up anxious for news of husbands, sons, fathers and brothers. Reporters also arrived, but the police kept them at arm’s length too.
With Peter’s help, logging each and every patient, we were able to concentrate on the job in hand – treating the injured. I felt for poor Jenny, because she had the worst job of all. She’d gone underground not only to assist with the rescue, but also to recover body parts so that the deceased could be fully identified. I thought of all those poor families standing outside in the freezing cold November morning, crying and waiting for news. We treated the men for hours at a time, but the queue seemed never-ending. It felt like being in the middle of a battlefield. Just when we thought we’d got through the worst of it, more miners arrived.
Finally, the queue filtered away to nothing. It was only then that I allowed myself a moment out. I drifted over into a quiet corner of the room to try to compose myself. Whatever I’d learned throughout my years as a nurse, nothing could have prepared me for something like this. Tears brimmed in my eyes but I willed them to go away. Peter noticed and stepped forward to hold me in his arms.
‘Peter, there are seven men dead, and God only knows how many injured,’ I mumbled. My hands were sore, my legs and back were aching, and my head was pounding with stress and exhaustion. By now, tears were threatening to tumble out and I didn’t know if I could stop them. Even though I’d managed to keep it together, now that it was finally over I felt overwhelmed with emotion.
‘Don’t cry or throw a wobbly, just keep calm and be there for them all – it’s all you can do. Okay?’ Peter said, squeezing me tighter.
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘That’s my girl!’ He kissed the top of my head.
I smiled and went back to my duties, tidying up the medical centre. Somehow, my team and I had managed to treat around 50 men over the space of nine hours. No other nurse had her husband with her because the rest of them could drive, but I felt blessed to have had Peter by my side. Just by being there, he’d given me the strength to carry on and do my job. Peter was and always would be my rock.
With the Mines Rescue Service now in full attendance, the dead were recovered from underground and their bodies transported to the makeshift mortuary. A first aider was given the unenviable task of making each man look presentable for their relatives. The managers allowed one relative from each deceased man’s family into the pit to formally identify them. Peter’s list of injured men became invaluable – we were able to direct worried relatives to the right place because we knew where every man had been sent. Once all the men had been treated and duly identified, Sister Sarkar came over to thank us for our hard work. By now it was 2 p.m., and Peter had been due his heart medication hours before. With very little left to do, I asked Sister Sarkar for permission to leave.
‘You get yourself home, Sister Hart,’ she agreed. ‘You look exhausted.’
She was right; I was both physically and mentally spent. It had been one of the most gruelling days of my life, and one that would remain with me in the years to come. Exhausted, we climbed into the car and Peter started up the engine. As we pulled out through the colliery gates, the police had to help direct us because there were still so many relatives crying for loved ones at the pit gates.
As we wound down the narrow streets of Bentley village I noticed hordes of neighbours gathered, hunched over garden fences and outside doorways, comforting one another. The whole village was grieving. It broke my heart to see them. Their faces continued to haunt me as we
headed away from Bentley and back towards home, but still I refused to cry, even though I’d witnessed one of the most distressing things I’d ever had to deal with. I didn’t cry despite being on site when men had passed away. I didn’t even cry when I realised it had been almost 47 years to the day that Bentley had experienced a disaster on the same scale. But once the bungalow door had closed behind me, I broke down. I sobbed my heart out until I had nothing left to give. I wept for the brave and proud miners who’d been cut down in their prime, and for those who had died in the middle and at the end of their working lives. I sobbed for their wives, mothers, daughters and sisters. But most of all I grieved. Losing those men had felt like losing a member of my own family, because the mining community was a big family. The disaster had changed everything in an instant. It had wounded an entire community and, while it would eventually heal, the scar would remain in our hearts. Nothing would or could ever be the same again.
Time passed and, months later, like other families that day, I suffered my own personal loss. I was at work one day when a call came through to the medical centre. It was Bill, Mum’s partner.
‘It’s your mum. She’s really ill, Joan,’ he explained.
Mum had been having the treatment for bone cancer, but because I was back living up north I didn’t see her as often as I would have liked. Still, I telephoned her every week and tried to visit at least once every three months. Even though she had the willpower of 10 men, her frail body had begun to fail.
‘They say it’s gone into her brain.’ Bill sobbed as the words caught at the back of his throat.
I didn’t know what to do because Mum was hundreds of miles away, in London. After I put down the phone, it rang again. It was a staff nurse from the hospital, and it was obvious she didn’t have a clue which part of the country I lived in.
‘Can you get here in the next half an hour? It’s your mother – she’s very poorly.’