Damn lucky to be alive

All 36 survived, only a pony dramatically lost, on the night that the River Browney became diverted through Littleburn drift. The colliery was never worked again.

"Matty Drennen, me marrer, says you cannot gan seekin' them through that lot. I says I have to man, it's me job," recalls Geordie Glasgow. "Mattie says if thoo's gannin', aa's gannin' an' all."

Geordie was also awarded a citation from the Carnegie Hero Trust Fund, a dance at the British Legion hall in Meadowfield and a gold watch and (he says) "eight pound and odds" from the grateful mining community.

It's only when asked how first he felt on re-emerging, on again seeing the November night sky, that he reaches for the tissues and unashamedly wipes away a tear.

"Fifty years," says Geordie, and "it wasn't a very nice place, the pit."

Littleburn drift mine, and the village of that name which straggled around it, were three miles south-west of Durham. George Glasgow, in the same house at Brandon then as now, was looking forward to his 28th birthday the following week. He was in charge that night, and glad just to be out of the downpour.

"It had rained that hard and that long, you thought it was never going to stop," says Geordie. "It's funny how it's all happening again."

Darlington had had 2.3 inches in two days, West Hartlepool firemen had pumped 150,000 gallons from Brighton Lane quarry, the Coldstream railway had been washed away and, not for the first time, the harbour front Cod and Lobster pub at Staithes was in danger of being swept into the sea. As if things weren't bad enough, the bakers' federation warned of a shortage of iced Christmas cakes ("unlike the British housewife we haven't been given a sugar bonus") and Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, was expressing concern that knitting wool had risen to threepence an ounce.

On the night shift in Littleburn pit the pumps were still working, the men had adopted Kenneth Grahame's attitude - "what's a little wet to a water rat?" - and Geordie Glasgow was able to report to the surface that it was one o'clock and all was well. It didn't last.

"It was only when the transmitter packed up," says Geordie, "that we realised something was desperately wrong."

What was desperately wrong was that the Browney had burst its banks, uprooting a large tree. Water poured through the crater and into the mine workings below; the pumps had failed.

"I phoned back to the surface," says Geordie. "They said it wasn't just watter, it was the bloody river. I took a pony and went towards the watter, knee high at first and then chest high. There was no way we'd get back the way we'd come in."

Instead, he remembered an escape shaft that he himself had helped sink, over a mile from the pit head. The shaft, 50 feet deep, had a 9ft ladder and little inlets from which the men could haul it up for the next stage - difficult enough for frightened miners, impossible for a terrified pit pony.

"We tried to get it into a harness. The pony was called Tommy; would it gan, would it hell."

Rather than see it drown, Geordie and Matty Drennen decided to kill their favourite pony as humanely as possible.

"We had a mell hammer and a great big bolt like that, which we used to get the shaft cover off. The idea was that I'd hold the bolt against the middle of Tommy's forehead and Matty would bray the bolt with the hammer. I'd turned me head away. Then Matty says he'd have the bolt and I could have the hammer - I swear to this day I saw a tear in that pony's eye.

"We couldn't do it. The poor thing just had to be left."

The first men having reached the surface, Geordie and his mate returned through the rapidly rising water to search for those in the furthest districts.

"We could hear them shouting, but there was a bit of panic, expecially one chap big enough to take size 12 boots.

"He was telling us just to leave him, that he couldn't gan. I says if one's left, we all get left. I could feel the tension, even let them stop briefly for a drag, then got them going because the watter was fast rising."

His knowledge and composure led them through a passage known as the back airway to the escape shaft. They emerged, fastened by their belts to the slippery ladder, to find the colliery manager - "and all the big noises" - at the top. Geordie immediately proposed going back with a humane killer to put the pony out of its misery.

"Who'll gan?" asked the manager.

"Aa'll gan," said Geordie.

"Will thoo hell," said the manager and after taking safety precautions, set off himself down the 50ft shaft, discovering after barely three rungs that he was already in the water. That's how close they'd all been to true disaster.

The front page of following day's Northern Echo reported special praise for Geordie and for Matty Drennen, 28. "They had returned to the point of danger after reaching safety to succour the remaining men."

With typical pitman's modesty, added The Echo, Mr George Glasgow minimised the part he had played. "We just did what we had to do," he said, and seemed more concerned at the attendant press gang - "worse than going back for the men," he said, and may have had a point.

For months afterwards, his former friends would have their baits in one corner, Geordie in another. "It was I'd been on the wireless and got me name in the papers. I was involved in one or two things after that, but swore I'd never talk to the papers again."

George VI regretted that he couldn't present the medal personally ("he wasn't in very good health" explains Geordie) but sent a letter which still he treasures. Matty Drennan received the King's commendation, they and Tom Burke and Matt Kaine were feted at a variety show at Langley Moor Empire, given watches and received eight pounds and odds apiece from the balance of the collection.

George Glasgow went back down the pit at Bowburn and at Spennymoor, became an insurance man, school caretaker and chairman of the old folks' club.

He is a lovely, gentle, modest man, recovering from a broken hip and sundry other ailments with the determination he showed in the early hours of November 23, 1950.

"It was a job and it was all that there was but sometimes when it's raining again I think of that devastating night down Littleburn, the watter deluging through the pit, and I know there were 36 of us damn lucky to be alive."

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/news/north.html