BASEMENT RESCUE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 83, 4 October 1940, Page 7

BASEMENT RESCUE

A.R.P. "ROUGH JOB"

GEORGE CROSS HERO'S

STORY

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, October 2,

A .story showing what "rough jobs" mean for the A.R.P. rescue squads of Bridlington, Yorkshire, was told in a broadcast by Mr. Thomas Alderson, of Leeds, one of the first recipients of the George Cross.

"About our worst time," he said, "was when two five-storey {buildings got a direct hit. We were called out and found them in ruins, with the planes still about and bombs crumping in the distance. We searched round and found a basement door partly uncovered. In one house the walls were still standing, and they did not look*very safe, but we started at that basement door and cleared it.

"Nothing was too small to move, and I passed bits of brick, plaster, and wood back along a chain of men till we managed to get inside. The ground floor joists had collapsed and been jammed between the basement wall and the floor, and this had given protection to four people in a corner. There was a big farmhouse table in the middle of the floor, and it had partly collapsed and was half-support-ing«.the beams and smashed walls from the floors above. Lying on my side, I began to work a hole over the table, keenuiE? a wary cv» nn the unsafe

debris and passing bricks and rubbish back along the chain of men. At last there was enough space for us to slide the four people head first into the hole over the table, swing their legs round, and pull them backwards through the basement door.

"A boy and a girl were still left, badly trapped under heavy' joists towards the centre of the basement. The table had now to be carefully broken up and removed, and again the debris was passed out bit by bit. There was not room to use the standard A.R.P. jacks, and I called for motor-car jacks. With these we managed to raise the main joist a little, but it started to crack. By jacking immediately underneath the crack I raised the joist still further.

"By this time the cellar was filling. with coal gas, and water appeared to be rising on the floor. The boy and the girl were in severe pain, so I called a doctor to give them an injection. We had to work them free from thejoists and slide them out, but at last, after four hours' hard work with shaded hand torches as the only means of light, it was done. Planes were still humming overhead, but I had been too busy to notice them." Mr. Alderson, who is a supervisor for the Bridlington Corporation, had been training his workmen in rescue work for the past two years.