Inspiration for The Secret Sister

The Secret Sister – Liz Trenow

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The story of the Bevin Boys and the contribution of these so-called ‘forgotten conscripts’ to World War Two is little known and barely recognised. In fact I probably would not have known about them myself, had I not been fortunate enough to meet Ivor Singer – the father of a good friend – who was one of nearly fifty thousand young men destined to serve their country by mining coal.

By 1943 the British government realised that it had drafted so many men into the armed forces that a shortage of labour in the mines and the dwindling supply of the coal needed to make steel for planes, tanks and other armaments was reaching crisis point. When a plea for volunteers failed Ernest Bevin, the Minister for Labour and National Service, devised a scheme for compulsory conscription. 

Controversially, he insisted that conscripts should be chosen by ballot to make it completely fair. It is said that he asked his secretary to pull a number from a hat each month, and if your National Service number ended in those digits you would be sent down the mines. On average, one in ten young men of call-up age were chosen from all regions of the UK, all backgrounds and all levels of education.

Ivor Singer, a gentle, bookish boy, was dreading the arrival of his call up letter. Like all eighteen year olds at that time he expected to be enlisted in one of the armed forces. But instead, he found himself uprooted from London’s East End to a mining community in Staffordshire. He might just as well have been flown to the moon. 

The posting was deeply unpopular and, like Ivor, most of his fellow conscripts hated it. The work was poorly paid, hard and dangerous; accidents were common and near misses an almost daily event. The Bevin Boys, as they came to be known, enjoyed none of the kudos or perceived glamour of fighting for their country. Worst of all was the stigma of not being in uniform; they frequently endured public taunts for being cowards and were derided as ‘conchies’, because some genuine conscientious objectors actually volunteered to go down the mines. 

Ivor’s experience of three years working hundreds of feet below ground in a coal mine was traumatic, the memories still vivid well into his eighties. It ended when he was badly injured in a rock fall and trapped for several days before being rescued. He carried the scars – seams of coal dust deep under the skin of his back – for the rest of his life.

Even when the war was over, the Bevin Boys were not allowed to leave until two years after most servicemen had been demobilized, and received no medals or other recognition for their significant contribution to the war effort. Unlike those who had joined the armed forces, they were not awarded employment protection for their original jobs nor even a demob suit – a free set of civilian clothes – on discharge. 

Until as late as 2004 the Bevin Boys were not invited to march in Remembrance Sunday parades, even though other civilian services had long been represented.

Finally, in 2007, then Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that the Bevin Boys should receive long-overdue recognition and Ivor received his Veterans Badge, fifty years late. Five years after that the Bevin Boys memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire was unveiled.  

Researching for this book has made me appreciate the challenges faced by Ivor’s generation, forced to work in whatever other capacity the government decided, facing terrible hardship, injury and death. To refuse risked a prison sentence. I hope the story goes some way towards the recognition these brave young men deserved. There is more about the Bevin Boys at www.bevinboysassociation.co.uk and www.theforgottenconscript.co.uk. For more about the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire (visit highly recommended) please see www.thenma.org.uk. 

An essential and fascinating part of my research was a visit to the National Coalmining Museum at Caphouse Colliery near Wakefield in Yorkshire, where you can go underground and experience something of the life of coal miners through the ages. More at: www.ncm.org.uk

Maintaining vital supplies of coal was major problem for other countries involved in the war. In Germany and Poland, concentration camp prisoners as well as prisoners of war (like my character Tom Garrod) were sent down the mines, usually working in shocking conditions. In America, the government threatened to send in troops to act as strike-breakers when miners resisted a wartime ‘no-strike’ pledge agreed by other unions. The miners eventually won their campaign for better wages and conditions with memorable posters and slogans such as ‘You can’t dig coal with bayonets’ and ‘Give ‘em the stuff to fight with’.

Further reading:

• The Forgotten Conscript, A History of the Bevin Boy, by Warwick Taylor, Pentland Press, 1995
• Called Up, Sent Down, The Bevin Boys War by Tom Hickman, The History Press, 2010
• Bevin Boy, A Reluctant Miner by Reg Taylor, Athena Press, 2004
• The Bevin Boy by David Day, Roundwood Press, 1975
• ‘You can’t dig coal with bayonets’, Michael Hancock at National Archives in Philadelphia, 2018 www.archives.gov/philadelphia

A brief synopsis, and a taster . . . 

1943: As Lizzie looks around her twin brother’s room, she’s in a state of shock. In the middle of the night Ed has vanished, leaving no forwarding address. She knows that he was tormented daily by what he witnessed at Dunkirk four years before, helping his father steer their tiny boat to rescue thousands of injured soldiers. He was never the same after that.

When his call-up letter arrives, Lizzie discovers that instead of being assigned to one of the forces, Ed has been told to report for work at a coal mine. If he fails to turn up he will be arrested and tried as a deserter. 

She tries on his coat and suddenly, as she looks herself in the mirror, she realises what she must do to protect him.

Arriving for training, Lizzie meets a fellow Bevin boy named Peter and is instantly drawn to his quiet, thoughtful nature, so unlike the other men who share her bunkroom. As the two start to adapt to their new lives underground, they develop a strong bond.

Lizzie knows the risks she is taking to save her brother. If she grows too close to Peter her secret will almost certainly be revealed, and they will both be imprisoned. But with the war raging and her beloved country at risk, how much is she prepared to sacrifice to save those she loves the most?

 Perfect for fans of The Alice Network, The Nightingale and anything by Rhys Bowen. 

A taster – from part way through the book:

Walking across the station concourse, she felt suddenly vulnerable, certain that people would immediately see through her deception. She tried to apply the directions the drama teacher had given about acting as a man: chin up, shoulders back and chest out, feet slightly turned out, legs a little apart as you walk. 

‘Look as though you rule the world,’ the teacher had said, ‘because that’s what men assume.’ 

Her hair might be short, the jacket, shirt and tie clearly visible beneath the open overcoat, but Lizzie still feared that people would stare, sensing some kind of oddness about her. In fact, she began to realise, the very opposite was happening. People were actually ignoring her. 

She’d never been any great beauty, of course, not compared to some of her more glamorous school friends, but since turning sixteen she’d become used to attracting glances from men, their gaze lingering longer than necessary on her face, her bust, her legs. Not just boys, but men of all ages: workers at the shipyard, the old fishermen gossiping at the harbour as they tended their nets. At first she’d been flattered by the attention, enjoying the power it seemed to give her, but after a while she’d become accustomed to the daily scrutiny, to the point where she barely noticed it. It was part of life for a woman, wasn’t it? 

Now, for the first time, she realised that this gaze was something only women were subjected to, and that boys went generally unremarked. Little wonder that at a certain age girls seemed to become acutely self-conscious about their looks, so concerned with their hair and make-up and easily embarrassed, while boys of the same age were apparently unaware of the impression they were making. 

A new sense of freedom stole over her, as though a burden had been lifted from her shoulders. She chuckled to herself as she strode across the platform: among strangers, she could be truly anonymous.

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Liz Trenow is the NY Times and USA Today best-selling author of ten historical novels, many of them set during the Second World War. As a former journalist, she loves to explore the lesser-known aspects of wartime history, and her latest novel, The Secret Sister (published by Bookouture on 3rd April 2023) is no exception. Here, Liz describes the encounter that led to her writing what she believes is the first-ever novel about the extraordinary World War Two experiences of thousands of British 18 year olds who, instead of being enlisted to fight, were sent down the coal mines. 

Find out more about Liz and her other books at www.liztrenow.com or join her on Facebook or Twitter @liztrenow. Buy The Secret Sister here: https://geni.us/B0BTMMX2MSsocial