David Day - Telegraph Posted to Littleton Colliery in the Cannock Chase coalfield in Staffordshire, Day worked underground for more than three years, finally as a "tadgerman," drilling shotholes in the coalface. In his book he recalled an alien world in which wooden pit props, known as "trees," were held in place by "clets," "timps," "nubblins" and "sprags," while the roadways which took the coal wagons were lined with planks known as "slobs." He recalled the "cockwood" timber trimmings which the miners would smuggle out for their own use: "In the innocence of youth I used this expression once in mixed company, causing the men to look sheepish and the women to chuckle and call me a naughty boy. I had not realised what might happen on the mat in front of the fire when the blaze of this purloined wood was emitting its seductive glow. He dropped his guard once, in the run-up to the 1945 general election, when he spoke out in favour of Winston Churchill, a hate figure in the mines for his role in the General Strike of 1926, when he was reported to have suggested that machine guns be used on the strikers: "After a shocked silence one of the men cried, 'Why, you're nothing but a bloody Tory," as if this were an impossibility down a coal mine. Henceforth any reference to me was preceded by 'that Tory so-and-so."" Above ground, things were not much better. Though most, including Day, would have preferred to go into the Armed Forces, they faced jibes of cowardice and were "curtly treated by many people such as shop assistants or bus conductresses, who made it pretty clear that they thought we were shirkers." Nor, Day recalled, did the Bevin Boys (who had a reputation for Bolshiness and frequent absenteeism) ever receive encouragement from the country's leaders, one MP describing them as "not worth the trouble." When the war ended they received no official recognition to match the medals awarded to returning soldiers. In 1993, Day and 10 other surviving Bevin Boys returned to Littleton Colliery to mark the 50th anniversary of the scheme, but a month later it was announced that the colliery - the last working pit in Cannock Chase - was to be closed. In a foreword to the second edition of his book, Day wrote: "In describing my personal experiences as a Bevin Boy I seem inadvertently to have also recorded an underground life that has now gone forever." The youngest of six children, David Day was born at Evesham on September 2 1926 and educated at Prince Henry's High School. After leaving school he joined the Evesham Journal as a cub reporter in 1942. In The Bevin Boy, Day recalled that his chief ambition, before he was conscripted to work in the mines, had been to get away from Evesham. When he returned home in 1947, however, it felt like "paradise." He returned to the Evesham Journal, where he worked as the paper's district reporter in the North Cotswolds for 36 years until he took early retirement, writing two books about his adventures as a journalist, All Over The Wold (1998) and The Duck Pond Affair Etc (2005). During his retirement Day worked part-time at Cotswold district council's heritage centre in Northleach, and as clerk of Bourton-on-the-Hill parish council. He was unmarried. David Day, born September 2 1926, died November 25 2011