55 years ago today...

.....my grandfather Piotr Zabada finished his shift at Taff Merthyr Colliery and went straight with the other miners to Aberfan where they spent the next 12 + hours retrieving the bodies of the buried children.
116 children never returned home from Pant Glas School that day - the day before half-term holiday -28 adults also killed.

....and the NCB took £150K from the Memorial Fund towards the cost to remove the remaining tips - shame on you Robbens! (eventually repaid)
(See my deda Piotr and fellow miners at Aberfan on You Tube - 'This is Tragedy 1966')

 

Always think of this song in my head when I read about the tragedy mate.

 

Heart wrenching thinking how poorly miners lives and their families were thought of.

 

Anything that happens to children kills me Helen.

 

We are still no better thought of

 

Not forgotten though.

 

I wonder if it makes the News .
Tradgic for the community to live with.
Sending the kids to school, not to return.

 

Awful..

 

I remember the day well. A teenager on half term holiday living on the Wilson St. estate in Wombwell. The shame of the government taking money from the families of the victims and survivors is a huge stain on Wilson's government.

 

I was at my grandma's in Thurnscoe watching it on the news. At the age of 10, I don't think the full horror of all hit me at the time, but I do remember looking at some of the spoil heaps round the area and wondering if it could happen to us.

 

Definitely not, especially by those of us who were born and brought up in mining communities and had first hand experience of men coming home injured, or not coming home at all.

 

I remember coming home from school to find my dad crawling round the floor in his pants and vest. He'd been working on the chocks on his knees when some "muck" fell on the sole of his boot, breaking just about every bone in his foot.

 

We were called into the school dining room, which we thought was certainly unusual. The first thing I noticed was some of our teachers were quietly crying. As it was a C Of E Infant School, the local vicar, Mr Unwin, stood in front of us and told everyone of the tragedy unfolding in South Wales. I was stunned, how could God allow such an awful thing to happen to innocent children?
When I got home, the television was on with the story. I saw my Mam sat on the settee, crying.
An awful day, rightly remembered, especially in fellow mining communities.

 

There is a lovely piece from a 90 year old methodist minister on the Times twitter feed. Had me welling up a bit.

Like Stephen says ......... if it's children :-(

 

Where was your grandad from? His name sounds Ukrainian or possibly Polish.

 

Saddening memory

 

A deputy came to our house and told us that dad was at Beckets. A chain on which a machine pulled itself along the coal face was caught. As the machine pulled itself along, the chain tightened until it broke free and 'flashed' around. It smashed my dad in the face. I went to Beckets. It could have been far worse, as it was, his cheekbone was broken and pushed into his head and his nose was broken. His face was very swollen and they'd taken him straight from the pit. He was in his workgear, dusty as fook, knee pads, sweatlined down the dust on his face, cheeks sunken in because they'd taken his dentures out. I was a teenager now and it brought it home to me what he did every day...

 

I remember at infant school the boy who I sat next to did not come back in the afternoon. His father had been killed down the pit that morning.

 

After Aberfan, there was maybe eight died at Lofthouse near Wakefield.when the miners broke into an old, unchartered shaft which had filled with water.
Then at Markham the cage dropped and free fell to the bottom.