My brother was also a miner when he was much younger, and I remember a story he told me once. He and a few other guys were doing maintenance work near a conveyor belt in one of the two roadways (tunnels) leading to each end of a coalface. The face was squeezing heavily, with disturbing sounds coming from the strata, and with immense amounts of pressure on the pit props. Some of the wooden ones were cracking up, so the guys decided to get the hell out of there. The only problem was that one of them had got himself stuck underneath the conveyor belt, and the others tried to get him out. So the guy under the belt came out with the line "leave me lads, save yourselves!". This was such a film cliche that my brother and his mates totally creased up, and took ages to get it together enough to get the guy out. There was of course absolutely no way they'd have left him.

Cheers
Ray