For about six months I worked just behind the miners on the main drive.  I was a “grouter”.  The grouters pumped grout into the void between the concrete segments and the cut rock.  It was hard graft but really well paid.

   One day, while the tunnelling machine was being serviced, the Foreman Fitter, an Irishman called Ted Lafferty, came to the face and said we had to do a practice emergency exit with a casualty on a stretcher.  Ted Lafferty was not a popular man and Ginger in particular didn’t like him at all.  Ted asked for a volunteer and of course no one stepped forward.  Ginger suggested that Ted be the casualty and he reluctantly agreed.  Ted was strapped securely into the stretcher.  It braced his arms and legs and ginger asked him if he could move.  He couldn’t.

    “Right lads lets get this poor injured person the fuck out of my tunnel!”

    Ginger and three of the miners each took a leg of the stretcher and carried him through the machinery.  At the back of the machine the water was about two feet deep. 

    “Take a deep breath Ted”  Ginger said as they put the stretcher down into the water.

They left him under for what seemed like ages then lifted him out.  He was choking and spitting water out and swearing at Ginger.  They then inverted the stretcher so he was face down and lowered him back under as they began to walk out.  It seemed hilarious at the time but the best, (or worst), was still to come.  When they reached the exit shaft, instead of sending for the man rider cage, Ginger just hooked the four legs of the stretcher onto the crane chains and poor old Ted was lifted up the eighty-five feet shaft face down.  He left that day.  Oh well.