RIVIERA TRAIN WRECK.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 94, 21 April 1924, Page 6

RIVIERA TRAIN WRECK.

. l GIRL'S VIVID ACCOUNT. SCENES AFTER THE CRASH. HEROISM OF VICTIMS. (Prom Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, March 11. A detailed account by a passenger of the Riviera express wreck in which throe British passengers were killed and 24 injured is published in the "Star." The scenes after the crash in the dark are vividly described by Miss M. Atkinson, a London girl. Many instances of heroism on the part of the injured arc recorded. Some of them insisted on others being attended to before they themselves were released from the wreckage. "Like some of the other travellers by the train," she said, "I was disappointed on finding that it was impossible to obtain a sleeping berth, but now we realise that our misfortune was one of the best bits of good fortune that ever came our way. "I was sleeping in an ordinary coach in the middle of the train when the accident happened. What woke mc was the sensation of being thrown violently across the compartment, rendered pitch dark by the failure of the light and the drawn blinds. "We were just conscious of a terrific impact, which seemed to make the train tremble from end to end, and after that came the sensation of the carriage rising bodily into the air, remaining suspended for a second or two, and then toppling over on its side. After that the crashing of glass, the rending of wood, and the noise of steel bodies crashing together. The Scene at Dawn. "In our compartment we lay huddled in a heap, with broken glass and luggage from the racks piled on to us. It was a weird awakening, for we had not the remotest idea of what had really happened. "However, we managed to scramble out of the coach and on to the line, where, in the light of the dawn stealing over the landscape, we could see the smashed luggage van, the first sleeping coach with another coach mounted on top of it, and could make out forms entangled in the wreck, and hear the cries of agony from some of the victims pinned helplessly by wreckage. "At the other end of the train where the coaches were still standing were frightened faces peering from windows, and by the side of the line were many passengers like ourselves, who had been rudely turned out in the middle of their I slumbers. "One or two were in night clothes and most in wild deshabile generally. Touching Incidents. "After the first shock was over the survivors turned to aid their less fortunate fellow travellers, and some of the scenes we witnessed were touching iv, the extreme. "At one point was a wife who had a miraculous escape, standing by a husband pinned under tho wreckage, and obviously so badly injured that he must have been enduring agony. But all the while he was trying to utter words of comfort and cheer for the benefit of tho tortured wife who stood by. "Nearby was a young girl comforting a father pinned in the wreckage, but always searching for the missing mother, who was ' somewhere in the debris of the coach, and might he badly injured. "The nest thing about the terrible business was so much thought for others, so much making \light of their own troubles by victims. " 'I can wait,' was the remark of one injured man as he waved away the willing workers who came to lever him out. For what was little more than 20 minutes, but must have seemed Eternity to him just as it it did to us, the rescue men toiled before they found his wife and daughter, little the worse for what they had been through, but by that time the man who had thought of them first had lapsed into unconsciousness. Heroic Girl. " 'Don't mind mc, get my brother cut; he's worse than I am,' said a young girl whose face was ghastly white and drawn with suffering., "In like manner the French officer, now reported among the killed, had thrown away his chance of life by directing attention of would-be rescuers to a woman hidden among the debris. When his turn came he was dead. "Consid'->j:g the position at which the disaster occurred, assistance was quickly on the scene, but most of the rescue work and first aid was rendered by the passengers, assisted by the few. train attendants. Women's Calmness. "Some of the women on the train were as calm and resourceful as any of the men. I saw several scantily clad women working to release victims and giving what aid and comfort they could to sufferers until the ambulances came to remove them-. The injured, in most cases, lay patiently awaiting aid, though they 'must have been enduring agony. Pathetic in the extreme was the case of one white-faced girl who kept murmuring, 'Lord Jesus, give mc strength to bear it,' while the rescue party were trying to extricate her. She was one of the worst of the non-fatal cases.