South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 02 May 1942

Six Feet High Plane Reduced To a Foot

Leslie Thompson, one of the five men released from the pit early on Monday morning, told a reporter who visited him later in the day at the Montagu Hospital how he laid a trail of articles, including a broken watch and a pencil, In the hope that it might guide the rescuers.

He he was with Mackenzie, Cruise and Fudge when the fall occurred, and the floor heaved up to the roof. The main plane he had just left was six feet high before the quake and when they went back foot to try hig and get out it was only a foot high. The four of us crawled in single file along the main plane, which in places was only six inches high. Our stomachs and backs were ripped and we scratched dirt from under us to make the tunnel higher. As far as I remember we crawled 100 yards this way. “Then we got to Winder, who was trapped under some girders and we released him. The top of his thumb had been cut off, he had two ribs broken and his leg was hurt, but we got him free. In his waistcoat pocket we found his watch. It was broken, so we could not tell what the time was. We managed to circle round him and tried to struggle on. In a hope that It might help the rescuers I left a trail of the things I had found In Winder’s waistcoat pocket—his watch, a pencil, a knife, and a piece of chalk were among them.

Eventually we could go no farther. We were all in. We lay down and hoped for the best. “We don’t know how the hours passed. All of a sudden we heard a shout and saw a light corning along the way we had crawled, following the track I had left behind me. It was a rescuer. If ever a man deserved a medal he did. He crawled all the way on his stomach with a light until he got to us. Hot tea was passed through to us, and we lay there for six hours to get our strength back. Then we managed to nimble round, and each holding on to a foot of the man in front, we started to crawl back the way we had come. When we got so far we were put on stretchers and taken to the pit top. Dr. Campbell went down to Winder and gave him treatment.”

Mackenzie paid tribute to Cruise, who, he said had obtained some water for the party, though they only had six pints until the rescuers reached them, over two days after they were drat trapped. He mentioned that this was his second escape, as he was in Bentley Colliery at the time of the disaster there, but got out unscathed.

Asked how he got the water Cruise said he and Thompson knew where the dudley had been left and that they were partly full of water. They worked their way to this place but were held up about five yards away from the tins. Eventually he managed to squeeze through and reach the water and poured the contents of the dudleys into one of them which he took back to the others.

Fudge said he thought the whole pit had come in. It was not a fall but more like an earthquake. It was not so much that the roof came down as that the floor heaved up.” Although the direction is which they crawled was away from the rescuers it led to them finding Winder whom they were able to help.

“It would have been a bad look-out for him if we had not gone that way.” Winder seemed more worried because his injuries had prevented him helping the others than about the injuries themselves. He described how he managed to crawl a hundred yards “on one arm and one leg” before he was eventually drawn out by the rescuers on a brattice sheet.