HEROES ON SEA AND LARD.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 697, 22 August 1914, Page 7

HEROES ON SEA AND LARD.

HOW FIREMAN SAPFERY WON THE L.C.C. MEDAL FOR BRAVERY. It was a mild November night, a neighbouring clock had just tolled one and Bermondsey Street was asleep. All was silent in that grave, dreary thoroughfare ; in the houses that; lined it lay weary women and toilstrained men in slumber, at rest for a few hdurs from the labour that brought them their daily bread. Over one house, whilst its inhabitants slept, spread the shadow of danger and death : from one of its lower windows was issuing a thin streak of smoke that rose upwards almost 'in a straight line in the damp night air unruffled by the faintest breath of wind. Upstairs on iho top floor a man lay tossing an I moaning in ms sleep as if some i-h----seen power were trying to warn him of the danger that menaced him and all in his house. Presently he awoke with a start, and sat up in bed, and then in an instant he had bundled on his clothes, and in another moment his voice was ringing through the house waking the weary sleepers with that awful cry, the cry of "Fire !"

Soon the cry was heard by tk« neighbours, and scared faces appeared at w'indows, and down the street floated the cry, "Fire ! flr» !" It was hjeard by a policeman, and three minutes later the stillness of tae night was broken by the sound ol galloping horses and the din and clatter of the speeding fire engine and escape. The house was well alight when the escape arrived, but in less time than it takes to write it, the screaming women with their children and the pale-faced men who stood in Safety on the flags. Nine lives saved in less than two minutes. The escape was now withdrawn from the house,, for the flames were beginning, to leap angrily out the windows as if furious at their prey being snatched from them. The total destruction of the house was plainly inevitable, and the brigadq men devoted themselves to keeping the fire from spreading. And then someone said there was one more life in the burning house —a man who slept on the second front floor, out of which room the flames were now bursting freely. "There can be no one alive in that room," said a' policeman grimly, but the escape had been brought back, for Fireman Saffrey had volunteered to search the room. The feat he performed in the next few minutes was one of the most daring ever done by any fireman in the whole history of the London i Fire Brigade. So fierce were the flames that were bursting from the window of the room which Saffrey ; proposed to. enter that it was found impossible to bring the escape up to it, for the flames would have destroyed the: escape in a few minutes.

The ladders were, however, lowered to a few inches below the window, two hoses were then directed at the window, whilst a third was kept at play on the daring fireman, who under cover of this attack on the flames went to face almost certain death.

Right through the flames that leaped and hissed at him as the water poured on them he f ought his way and entered the room. A man lay on the floor on the far side of the room, which appeared to be everywhere on fire. It was practically certain that the man was dead, and to cross the room involved almost certain death, for it was ten to one that the floor would break through with the weight of the fireman, and he would be precipitated into the blazing room below.

But Saffrey took this risk without a moment's hesitation, and' snatched the man who lay insensible on the floor from a terrible death. Deafening cheers greeted Saflery's reappearance at the window, and even his own comrades marvelled at the deed the daring fellow had performed.

When Saffery reached the ground with his burden he collapsed, he was almost as badly burnt as th« man he had rescued.

His hands, legs, and head were terribly burnt, and he was subsequently confined for five months in hospital for part of which time he lost his powers of speaking and hearing. But in due courss he recovered end received the L.C.C. medal for special bravery, and the story of how he won it will live long among the members of the London Fire Brigade—"'Weekly Telegraph." . .