An incident stands well in my mind when I was using the cultivator, I was carting some manure up the field for some potatoes that I was about to put in the ground. Behind the cultivator I had attached to it a small cart or truck which could hold about 10 cwt of manure. I was jogging along with my load when I suddenly slipped and had to leave my grip on the cultivator but the machine kept going, I was between the cultivator and the truck and one wheel ran over my left knee and I can thank my lucky star the ground was a bit soft, pressing my knee in the ground and taking the use of my left leg. I was there, useless, and watched the machine tugging its load towards the glass house that I had, and many thoughts ran through my brain as I watched it going towards it. I was rubbing my knee with all the power I had to get a little movement in it, then I started to crawl towards it on my hands and knees, it was a good thing for me that it was a slow moving machine and I managed to catch up with it and press the petrol lever - stopping it about six yards from the glass house. I lay there completely jiggered and left the machine and truck where it had stopped for a couple of days. It wa quite a joke on me for a while when my friends used to say to me "It's not often, Tom, a man runs over himself!" I was off work for a week and that's where my real trouble was. When I stopped, everything stopped, except what my wife could do, just collecting the eggs and washing them. I went back to the pit after a week at home, and the first thing I received when I got there was a note on my lamp asking me to report to the Undermanager, wanting to know why I had been absent from work. I had to explain to him what had happened but he was, I could see, a bit sceptical, anyway he told me to get cracking on a new job he had waiting for me. At the time, with the War going full belt, absenteeism in the pits was strictly frowned on.

I had been working about a month on the afternoon shift which was a period from 2pm to 10pm. We had just finished our shift and travelled to the pit bottom to be wound up the shaft when we heard the sirens wailing. Down the pit shaft there were about sixty men waiting to go up when the bombs started dropping on Liverpool and around Cronton Colliery, which is only a short distance away, and the winder had left his post to go for shelter. There we were listening to the bombs exploding for 2 hours and the noise going down the shafts was simply awful, one bomb had hit a slag heap nearby. We heard the sirens 'all clear' and we got the message from above - "everything all right and will start the cages coming down to pick the men up" - and I can truthfully say there was much relief among the men down there. It was about 2 o'clock in the morning when we arrived home as the bus that should have taken us home had gone and left us. Very few of us turned up for work on the next shift.

Liverpool was getting the blast of the bombs at this time. I used to go when I had any time to spare to look at the damage that was being done along with people's homes and lives being wrecked, we were lucky to be out of this where we lived. It was also heartrendering to see the children and mothers being brought out every night from the Liverpool district to be out of danger. I remember one particular Saturday night, it was about 8pm and I had just finished going round my poultry to see if everything was all right for the night when I heard the sirens going and the old familiar sound of German planes overhead. All at once there was a screaming sound as an incendiary bomb dropped through a poultry cabin in the next field to mine, setting it alight. But for the Wardens who were on duty nearby there would have been a lot more damage done to that lot of cabins which were nearby. I have always given credit to those two men being so quick in putting out a fire that would have given the bomber crew more light to see. The same night a huge hole was made by a bomb about half a mile from where the incendiary had dropped on the cabin, it was quite a hectic night - one that I won't forget.

Time went on, people in many places were a lot worse off than we were, we could always get an egg or two and finish off with the hen that laid it by putting it in the oven after it had done its duty of the laying period. I had not much time or leisure because of work at home and the pit but I knew it could not last as I was beginning to feel the strain. I first began to notice it more when I was travelling from my place of work to the pit bottom which was a distance of about three quarters of a mile with a gradient of one in four. I used to do this with one stop for rest, then it became two stops, finally I could only do it with three stops for rest. Many a time as the men passed me while I was having a rest some of them would make a crack at me and say "By gum Tom, I think the old man is coming over you", to which I would reply "It will come over you in due course". Anyway, we were always a bunch of friendly workmen who would help each other when required. I stuck to my work at home and also my work in the mine and sometimes I would pay a young fellow to give me an hour or so on the land to help me.

My youngest son who was learning to be an electrician was conscripted in the Army with R.E.M.E. and drafted away, this left us like many other families, on our own, but the War kept on with all its fury with no abatement. It was about this time at the end of 1944, I and my two coleagues were working on the coal face doing some repair work on a coal cutting machine when the roof started to break up. This we always called in pit terms "coming on weight", it would also give us warning by breaking all the prop supports and we knew this was the time to clear out. It is a frightening sound to hear the props breaking all around you. our sole object at this particular time was to save the coal cutting machine which was an expensive being. In the pits these machines are very awkward to move and we had to use a gablock and chain to get it out. This is a slow moving process and made worse with everything breaking up around us. I was trying to turn the machine around when I slipped on my right knee, cutting it, but at the time I did not give it much thought as we were feverishly bent on saving the machine which we did and got it safely out of danger. As we rested away from it all down came the whole coal face. Little did I think it was the end of my career in the pits.