When the war started in 1939 a few of the men, especially those who were in the territorials went off to France but coal was important for all sorts of things, the railways used it, electricity was dependent on it, the steel industry needed coke and the result was that most of the miners were exempt from army service. Some even turned miner to escape going away, though, at that time the mines were not particularly safe. For us boys it produced films about heroes and one boy, two or three years older than Rob and I was particularly affected. We had our pwn fantasies about cowboys and indians and the French Foreign Legion, which included Laurel and Hardy, of course and we lived those out enthusiastically but when this older lad wanted us to pretend, we knew it wasn't real and despite his enthusiasm, couldn't get into dive bombing ships, or being commandos at all. Dad saw him once throwing a pretend hand grenade at a pretend tank and he got the nickname of Sojer. We had Polish soldiers camped in the castle grounds and, of course, Sojer discovered an imaginary spy among them and wanted us to sneak about to find out who it was. Fortunately it was tea time and we were too hungry to become spy catchers.

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