Daisy's Wars Read Free

grew older, was part of the problem. What it did to her was
make her determined that she wouldn’t be there any longer than necessary. It gave her the will to move on from Newcastle and from the way the Irish all too often dealt with the city. She
didn’t know where or when she would achieve this, but she did know that she didn’t belong to either side, and she didn’t want to belong either. There was a world out there where
all these ancient hurts, tiresome resentments and mindless animosities didn’t matter, and that’s where she belonged.
    While Michael retold the old stories to his daughter, across the continent an odd-looking little Austrian was working himself into a simmering rage because Germany had lost WW1. Daisy had no way
of knowing it, but it would take the little Austrian’s ambitions to present her with that opportunity to move on when she was eighteen years old.

2
    When Bernard Sheridan and the other 149 Seaham Scabs took over the forcibly vacated homes of English miners, his work would make him and his family itinerants, moving from
colliery to colliery, wherever he was needed to open up a new pit. Sinkers dug through the earth to where unworked coal seams were to be found, creating new work for miners and increased profits
for the owners. It was back-breaking and dangerous work, but there would never be a safe job as long as the mining industry existed, and in time he picked up the special skills needed from his
fellow sinkers.
    They worked in teams of up to six, digging the soft earth on the surface by hand to open up a hole measuring ten feet by fifteen. As they dug deeper, a reinforcing framework of wood was
constructed to stop the walls of the trench falling inwards and burying them alive. Gradually the wood was replaced with brick and stone, and at the same time wooden shafts would be sunk through
the soft earth to the rock beneath. To get through this layer, hammers, chisels and sometimes explosives were used to clear a path to the coal seam below. The hole would run straight down for a
hundred feet or more, with the men being lowered down to work and hauled back up by steam-powered sinking engines.
    It went without saying that accidents were frequent. It was not a safety conscious era, and Lord Londonderry was no different from other mine owners in caring not a toss for his workers, as he
had already proved. If some protested about the conditions, there were always others willing or desperate enough to take their place.
    Danger came not just from the explosives they used, but from boulders falling down on the sinkers working below, and it wasn’t unknown for a man to fall into a deepening pit. Other risks
came from the earth itself, at a time when geology wasn’t understood. Encountering a sudden rush of water not only weakened the sides of the dig, but risked drowning men before they could be
hauled back up. Suddenly finding quicksand had the same effect, and, occasionally, they would hit gas, always a danger, even with ventilation shafts installed. The job of the sinker teams was a
skilled one that took time to master, but it suited Bernard in one way, because he had been used to the open land all his life and the thought of being completely underground, huddled in a dark,
wet, three-foot-high seam, hulking coal all day, scared him. In other ways it suited him less, precisely because he was a country boy and he hated the increasing darkness as he descended from
ground level, the lack of space and air. But it was still better than that three-foot seam, and if you looked up you could see the sky above.
    As a sinker he would work till the coal seam was reached, sink the shafts to support it, leave the actual coal-digging to others, then move on to the next village where his skills were needed.
It wasn’t uncommon for each child in a sinker’s family to be born in a different village because home was wherever their father happened to be working at the time, with the boys