Shell-Lorry Explosion

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 316, 29 March 1928, Page 12

Shell-Lorry Explosion

Driver’s Terrible Death “PULL ME OUT; I’M BURNING!” When a motor-lorry with a consignment of 200 boxes of 4.5 smokeshells, from Birmingham to Woolwich Arsenal, crashed down a 15ft. embankment at the village of Hockliffe, near Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, the driver was killed in the midst of flames and bursting shells. Four other men, also motor-lorry drivers, who heroically attempted to drag the driver from the burning pile, were badly burned about the face and hands by the bursting shells. The man killed was George Rivett, aged 22, of Suffolk Park Road, Walthamstow E.

Mr. T. H. Bryant, of the Fleur-de-Lys public house, which is almost opposite where the lorry went over the embankment, said that he was looking out of the window when he saw a sheet of flame leap from the ditch. Mr. Bryant added: “I rushed out and clambered down to where the lorry was hanging, I could hear the driver crying out, “Pull me out, I’m burning.” The man had been thrown out of his seat over the radiator and had fallen in front of the lorry with boxes of shells on top of him. Some of the boxes had broken, for the shells were scattered all around.

"Petrol and oil had already been ignited and there rvas considerable danger in approaching the lorry. Shortly afterwards other men came to my help, and went through the smoke-laden atmosphere. “We could see the man lying face upwards and both his legs were visible. With pieces of timber we tried to raise part of the wreckage to enable us to extricate him, but the flames were very fierce and the smoke swept us back. “Just when it seemed as though we

should succeed in getting him out, there -was an explosion and a quantity of stuff, which I took to be phosphorous, spurted into the faces and on to the hands of the other men. I was with them, and how it missed me 1 do not know. “I rolled Wagstaffe in the snow to try to help him. “There was a dense volume of smoke and flame, and it was impossible to effect a rescue. Rivett’s cries had now ceased. “It was nearly three hours before the flames died down sufficiently to allow Rivett’s body to be removed. “Phosphorus is said to have been contained in the shell cases, and burst over the men. It caused intense pain, and one of the men had a hole as big as a shilling bufnt in his face. While the police were taking the three men to Bedford Hospital, a distance of nearly 20 miles, they found it necessary to pour water over them from time to time."