PERIL OF "DUD" SHELL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18197, 16 September 1922, Page 2 (Supplement)

PERIL OF "DUD" SHELL.

EIGHT CHILDREN KILLED. GHASTLY" AMERICAN TRAGEDY. Eight children, ranging in a.ge from 6 to 11 years, were blown to pieces recently by the explosion of a 75-milimetre shell on the back porch of a house at Water-town, New York. The shell, which was owned by Mr. Workman, was one which he kept as a souvenir and used on the porch to keep tho door from closing. It was thought to bo "dead." The children wore playing croquet in the back yard. Tho shell is believed either to have been set off by the hot sun or to have been struck by ono of tho victims with a croquet mallet. Windows within a radius of two blocks of the explosion wore shattered. Practically all of the clothing was blown off tlio bodies of the children. The bodies were horribly mutilated but identification was possible in every instance. One of tho first phvsicians on tho scene was Dr. F. W. Jones. Lifting a covering vhich had been placed over one of the forms, he recognised u\e body of his 12-year-old daughter Vivian, by means of an adhesive dressing ho had placed on a cut on hor leg barely a hall-hour before. He did not know his daughter was in the group, and was almost overcome with grief. _

The bodies of the children were found apparently at places near where they had been standing in their croquet game. Near them lay the fragments of the croquet mallets. Several of the balls used in the game were blown to bits. Two carpenters at work on a house next door said that a second before the detonation they had heard the voices of the children laughing at play. Tlie two men w<sre the first to reach the scone. The}' were greeted with a scene of utter desolation. The house is of concrete and the concussion had reduced the entire rear of it to powder. On the ground were the eiorht bodies and over all a grey pall of] concrete dust waa beginning to settle. Fragments of clothing were suspended from trees and house tope. Two automobile tyres which had been on the back porch were blown to the roof of a building 200 feet away. Blocks of concrete were blown against neighbouring houses and into tho streots and surrounding yards. The shell had been fired from one of the six-inch howitzer guns during target practice of tho 105 th Field Artillery at Pine Plains reserve last summer and had not exploded by fuse or contact and lay in the sand folly charged when Mr. Workman found it and brought it home as a souvenir.