“ROUSE THE CAMP!”

Manawatu Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 2166, 4 July 1922, Page 7

“ROUSE THE CAMP!”

The party entered at 11.20, and Trigg remained at his post hoping against hope for the current to come on, and beside himself with renewed fears. At midnight, when the relief arrived, he could stand It no longer. Ho ran from the station, and this time went into the tunnel and the fumes—alone. Exhausted and sickened with the gas, he re-appeared, and cried, "They are down! Rouse the camp!” and fell partly unconscious. Before the relief had roused the sleeping occupants of neighbouring huts, Trigg was up and had gone again, with desperate valour, Into the tunnel. He was picked np by a subsequent party, and carried into the air. Two different parties entered. The first had a fearful ordeal, and some of its members were rescued by the second. Four of the bodies were brought out on trucks, but as all hope was given up of those further in any attempts at rescue was abandoned until the current was switched on. This did not take place until 1.45 a.m., when the three other bodies were carried out. The bodies of Maxwell and Butler were found 23 chains into the tunnel, four chains ahead of where the bodies of the most advanced of the first rescue party were picked up. Restorative measures were applied for an hour and a-half, but without anv flickering of life being perceptable. F. J. Birss, one of the first brought out, breathed for a moment, but though the most vigorous and sustained efforts to reta'n the spark of life were made it was the last mortal breath. Medical aid was summoned hastily from Shannon, but the two first victims and the five gallant men who went to their rescue in the first instance were beyond any aid. Butler, the pump attendant, changed with another attendant, a man named Lankshear, for the fatal shift in place of his own later one In order that he might spend the Monday In Shannon, where his parents reside.