A significant part of the First World War was fought underground. But those who dug the Western Front tunnels critical to the Allied strategy have rarely been recognised in historical literature.

Until now.

South Yorkshire historian, Brian Elliott, has published a new book titled Miners and the Great War, looking at the contribution of British miners in WWI both on the frontline and the home front.

With a generational connection to mining dating back over 150 years, former teacher Brian wanted to keep the story of coalmining going by looking at a previously neglected area of mining history.

“Miners’ roles in the war hadn’t been written about before and it’s a story that needed telling. Miners were pulled in two directions: to join the forces and serve their country, or to stay at home and dig the coal needed to power the war.

“I found lots of stories that had never been told before of people now long gone. In my childhood growing up in Carlton, everyone I knew had a mining connection. The slagheap dominated the skyline, and we had a community that helped one another. But times have changed and there’s not so much of that available now,” Brian says.

Having already written over 40 books and 300 historical articles, Brian’s latest book, published by Barnsley-based Pen and Sword, took 11 years to complete.

Over that time, Brian researched the stories of 800 miners from across the coalfields, whittling them down to around 100 mini biographies to include in the book. His research took him near and far, scouring newspaper archives, visiting war memorials and the National Coal Mining Museum, and doing battlefield tours in the Somme, Ypres and Lochnagar.

Brian has also included a chapter on Silverwood Colliery to show how mass deployment to the army, navy and air force impacted the pits back home.   

About half a million miners served in WWI, mostly as volunteers. One in five military volunteers came from the coalfields, answering Lord Kitchener’s call by signing up together in the many Pals battalions.

“Miners worked underground with all their mates around them. If one went to the recruiting office, it’s unlikely he went on his own.”

Colliery workforces were decimated, with up to one in three of a colliery’s employees swapping their pit duds for khaki.

Mining was a dirty and dangerous occupation, as Brian knows all too well. His father was a miner at Wharncliffe Woodmoor Colliery in Carlton from the age of 14. As a teen, he was fortunately off shift when an explosion in 1936 killed 58 workers at the pit.

“When my dad went to work, my mother was always very anxious because she wondered if she’d ever see him again. There were so many accidents in collieries up and down the country.

“Joining the army meant that these young lads could get out of it, see the world and spend time outdoors in the countryside. They saw it as a proper job, with a uniform and better pay, and they’d only be away for a few months – or so they thought.

“They didn’t know the conditions in the trenches and tunnels would be even more dangerous.”

Other miners were specifically recruited to join the Royal Engineers tunnelling companies and the Royal Army Medical Corps.

By July 1916, there were 25,000 specially trained British tunnellers working round the clock, 365 days a year. Hewers who dug coal manually were enlisted to dig complex warrens of tunnels under No Man’s Land where landmines would be placed to blow up the enemy troops.

Military mining was intense – far more dangerous than extracting coal back home. Usually only armed with a bayonet or their bare hands, or a small spade if lucky, these small but strong tunnellers had to pick into the heavy, oozing clay, risking being buried alive, drowned, asphyxiated by lack of air, or poisoned by gas.  

Generals also saw great value in the thousands of miners who had first aid and mine rescue training. They joined the RAMC as ambulance men and stretcher bearers. But days into the war they saw the true horror of the front line in battles like Mons and Loos.

Harold Fitch was a 23-year-old miner from Denaby Main Ambulance Corps who volunteered for the RAMC. He was posted to France in August 1915 for the Mons debacle, then to Loos in September 1915 where he was shot in the arm and poisoned by gas. Fitch was discharged but detailed to work on the hospital shift before being fully discharged in 1919 aged 28. He won various military medals for his bravery and comradeship.

“There was an in-built camaraderie amongst miners to help others, no matter what. If someone got hurt in the pit, you’d go and rescue them even if you didn’t like them. Generals saw this as an asset, and it resulted in so many gallantry awards for miners. There were 51 miners who won the Victoria Cross; no other single occupation had as many,” Brian says.

Key miners such as hewers and haulage men were exempted from conscription after the spring of 1916. They were needed in Britain to fuel the war effort and keep the country going – no coal meant no power and no life.

But such was their demand for use in tunnelling and in the medical services on the front lines that even these, many thousands of them, continued to be brought into military service, a process known as ‘combing out’.

With almost 300,000 miners having left the mines by then, employment was reduced at every colliery from Scotland down to Wales. Pits were staffed by older miners who exceeded the age limit, those under 5ft3 who were too short to join, or the very young and inexperienced school leavers or unemployed who’d been recruited to fill the empty positions.

Thousands of women and girls were also brought in to work as ‘pit brow lasses’, with girls as young as 13 sorting coal, operating weighing cabins, or stacking timber on the pit top.  

As the war went on, and the death toll rose, height and age limits altered for miners, with lots of older miners with over 20 years’ experience combed out from the collieries to help the war effort.

Back in Britain, mining communities were mourning the huge loss of life from the bloody battles of Loos, the Somme and Passchendaele. But they were also having to contend with a rising number of deaths and accidents at the pits. Around 7,000 miners were killed at work during the war.

Miners and the Great War also includes chapters on miners who were captured as prisoners of war or were conscientious objectors who refused to sign up for religious, political or pacifist reasons.

The latter faced far worse fates than imaginable, an aspect of his research that Brian says he found the most shocking.

“Any soldier who turned down a command could be court martialled, sentenced to hard labour at places like Wormwood Scrubs, or even killed by firing squad. Some died of ill treatment, but about 300 soldiers were executed for desertion. They’ve all been pardoned now, but there’s a memorial of a blind soldier at the Arboretum in Staffordshire.”

If they did survive, ‘conchies’ were ostracised by society; miners refused to work with them back in the pits and trade union COs were treated badly by the authorities.

As for PoWs, there was estimated to be between two and five-thousand miners who were captured in the war. Some were made to work in German coal and salt mines in conditions far worse than the UK. They were beaten with shovels for not meeting targets or placed in solitary confinement for refusing to work. Many died from dehydration and starvation, while others gave themselves injuries to escape the unbearable conditions of the camps.

A Rotherham Main miner, Lance Corporal Oliver Card, was killed while a prisoner at a camp near Rheims. He was beaten with a stick by a sentry for no apparent reason. When he tried to defend himself, the guard then shot him. He was 22.

As Armistice eventually arrived, four years, three months and two weeks after the Great War started, then began the mammoth task of demobilisation.

With coal mining classed as a priority, miners were some of those released from service the earliest. But re-employment back into the collieries proved problematic.

“Many miner soldiers went back to the pits if they were able to, many with life-changing injuries or missing limbs. They had to go back to work as their disability pension applications were denied. But while a lot did get their jobs back, others couldn’t as new people had replaced them.”

Rotherham hewer Walter Ackroyd was shot in the thigh in 1917, needing his leg amputating. But remarkably, he managed to return to work after the war, becoming known as the one-legged miner. He worked down the pit as an underground train driver – even with one leg – then became a councillor after retiring. 

As the Great Depression of the 1920s hit, miners were in the trenches one minute and on the dole the next. There was mass unemployment, pits closing, poverty and people starving. Soup kitchens were set up in industrial areas and miners went on hunger marches.

By the 1930s, one in five miners was unemployed – the same ratio of those who volunteered to serve in WWI.

“The sad thing is miners were promised ‘homes for heroes’ but miners formed a good proportion of those on the scrapheap.”

Brian’s latest release serves a timely reminder around Armed Forces Day of the unrecognised heroics of this underground army.

The hardback book is available to buy online direct from Pen and Sword.