So Harry, 81, feels he has earned the certificate and badge that at last recognises his contribution to the Second World War effort.

He was among a group of 50 Bevin Boys invited to a presentation ceremony on Friday at, appropriately, the Wakefield Mining Museum.

Although proud to at last be thanked properly, Harry, who lives on Ingle Avenue, bears no grudges for the years in the wilderness, though his time in the mines was anything but fun.

He said: "There was no choice, I was conscripted when I was 17 in 1943. I didn't think about it, I was just young and went where I was told but I didn't like it when I got there, it frightened me!"

He was sent to Lofthouse Colliery in Wakefield, one of the deepest pits in the country with a vertical shaft a mile deep and another mile to walk along dark tunnels to reach the coal face.

"It was a bit traumatic with me, Harry added."When I was 18 in 1944 I got trapped down there in Lofthouse pit.

"I was working the night shift with an old feller and a pit pony. Our job was to take equipment to the coal face for the day men.

"I noticed bitting, where coal drops off the ceiling, and I knew from training that this could mean there was going to be a fall.

"The man I was with told me to go ahead so I went forward and the next thing I knew was everything coming down behind me.

"It missed me but I couldn't get out and I was trapped there all night until the day men came to rescue me. It was very frightening, I was lucky though."

His luck ran out on March 6, 1945, a day forever etched into his memory as that was the day he was hit by an express train as he crossed over the line near Lofthouse Station.

"I finished my shift and nipped over the railway lines rather than going underneath and I got my foot trapped.

"The man with me ran when he saw the Sheffield express train coming, and it hit me."

Harry was in a coma for three days and spent the next six months in Clayton Hospital in Wakefield, having operation after operation to put metal plates in his head, repair damage to his face and mend his shattered pelvis.

"The police were going to prosecute me for trespassing on the line but they didn't because I was dying, Harry added.

He continued: "I came out on a stretcher, voluntarily discharged because there were no beds and I forced myself to walk. I never had any physiotherapy or anything and I would go to the pictures on two sweeping brushes.

Today you would never guess that the medical profession thought he would die and that he would certainly never walk again.

"I can run now, touch my toes, anything you want," he said with a smile.

It took him a full year to recuperate from the accident and he was not allowed back down the mines again as he wouldn't have passed the medical.

"They wouldn't let me go back in the mines without a medical but they called me up for the army and I was there for six months before they discharged me as unfit for service.