South Yorkshire Times – Saturday 02 May 1942
Barnburgh Main
The History of coal-mining is unfortunately punctuated with those disasters which seem inevitable where man strives against the forces of nature, whether underground, on the sea or in the air. If there are redeeming features to these tragedies they are the constant fortitude and courage of those involved, and the calculated bravery of the men who undertake rescue work.
At Barnburgh Main Colliery this week these characteristics have been nobly shown. Cut off by a disturbance which rocked the mine, seventeen men were at first feared to have perished, only for the worst weight of the catastrophe to be averted by the safe rescue of most of the men. Some died in the first chaos of the convulsion but others lived to fend for themselves with rare determination and initiative, desperately exploring the contorted workings until at length the rescuers got through to them and hauled them to safety.
A number of factors serve to place the mishap in a category of its own. The very nature and cause of the disturbance which wrecked this section of the mine, though not fully probed or proved as yet, seem to have been unprecedented. The bump, stated in Parliament to have been the cause of the trouble, was felt far beyond the immediate confines of the colliery, and even appears to have been recorded on instruments on the other side the Pennines.
The subterranean pressure was such that in describing their experiences the trapped men place more emphasis on the heaving up of the floor than the collapse of the roof of their working places. Another notable feature was the scale on which the rescue work had to be organised and exactingly continued day after day. Nothing that brain and muscle could devise and do was neglected. The magnificent success of these rescue efforts, the high proportion of the men saved, was a fitting reward for dauntless endeavour.
As soon as the dust of the crash had begun to clear officials perilously sought to assess the nature and extent of the catastrophe, and then swiftly and methodically steps for the succour of the missing men fell into sequence. Rescue teams, ambulance men, doctors, workmates of the men, and a host of others were welded into an organisation the spearhead of which drove its way night and day ever deeper into the devastated district. Here was nothing of the brief moment of bravery which ignores a fleeting risk; it was grim and gruelling work the value of which is in its unremitting persistence, and the practical knowledge and imagination behind its direction It was a shining example of coordinated effort and the dogged perseverance of individuals who became cogs in a great machine.
Even in the midst of a war which becomes more and more all-engrossing, it is no overstatement to say that the eyes of England were on Barnburgh Main on Monday morning as the lengthening list of those rescued became known. And perhaps there was a message for all who wondered at this unlooked for denouement; so glorious in its vindication of hard and unyielding endeavour in the face of odds.