October and the rain.

Beci Newton - 5 Oct 16

Life as a school run parent can be turbulent. Our mornings all too often quickly descend into shouting and chaos. The panicked search for a lone black shoe, PE kits being thrown into back packs and the toddler always needing a wee just as the door is unlocked. Sound familiar?

School day mornings are rarely spent reflecting. “Love you” is all too often said in a hurry, a quick kiss on the head and off we go.

But as the madness of September’s new routine clicks into place, October arrives. October and the rain.

It’s always the rain that reminds me.

It didn’t happen in my village. No one from my family was killed or injured, but nearly all the men in my family at the time went there. That generation ensured I knew and would always remember.

When we leave our children at the classroom door we truly believe they are safe. We never think that will be our last goodbye. We never believe we won’t see their face at pick up time. This is as it should be.

50 years ago in a village a stone’s throw from here, a village just like mine with a Victorian stone built school, a colliery and a tip, the unimaginable happens.

116 children.

At 9.15am on the 21^st of October 1966,  144 school children, their teachers and the inhabitants of nearby homes are dead. 32 are injured. They have been engulfed by the coal tip slipping and crashing into them.

The world stands still for a moment and looks on in silent horror. This is the true price paid for decades of cheap coal.

Colliers, mines rescue, police officers, firefighters and the army rush to the scene, some in open lorries, many on foot. They arrive to the site of parent’s frantically digging with bare hands to reach their children. Hundreds of skilled men dig with speed and precision, calling regularly for silence to listen for crying children.

After 11am that day no more survivors are pulled from the rubble and slurry.

This doesn’t stop the men  who work on for days in hope. It doesn’t stop mothers standing silently waiting.

The village chapels, usually filled with singing, fall silent. They have become make shift mortuaries where teams of doctors and funeral directors work to prepare these poor souls for identification. Days later many of the children are buried together at a mass funeral; their graves are now marked by beautiful, heart breaking white arches which overlook the village.

The TV cameras go home and the village is left to find a new normal. A village whose name will have the power to freeze time over and over. A village who have near lost a generation. A village whose grief and horror and fear is everywhere.

The black tips still looming over them.

The disaster fund clears the tips away, it funds community centres, youth clubs and further education for the remaining (and future) children of the village.

But all the money in the world could never repair the horrific scars left on hearts.

Especially those of the parents, the never ending internal questions they must have asked. “Why did I make them go?”, “what was the last thing I said?”, “Were they afraid?” “Were they in pain?”. The cruelty of the timing, minutes earlier the children would have still been in assembly, the hall unaffected. Just hours later the children would have gone home for half term.

How did the parents survive? Not only survive but go on to achieve so much as a community?

This year they break their silence in TV and radio documentaries. Bravely ensuring that their stories, and their children, are never forgotten. Of the very small clips I’ve seen, it’s clear to me that the answer to my question is, together. They got through together.

I think that we, together, should now turn our attention to them and in whatever way we can support them. 50 years is a long time and no time at all.

We must listen to their story in their words.

The mothers of Aberfan.

Beci Newton

Mother of two. Wife of one. Other titles include firefighter, cheese lover, outdoorsy, chatty and annoying.

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