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MG 1 volume 2124 number 131


For Clr. 13.

PERSONAL NARRATIVE
Andrew S. Cobb, Architect.
Communicated personally to Director in train going to [Bedord] Bedford, June 20th.

Was in train No.10 proceeding to Halifax on December 6th, 1917. When the train stopped near Africville he saw people carrying their injured in sheets. Volunteered to go for medical assistance but was compelled to give up the idea. Was one of six men working at one house till one o’clock rescuing a man and his wife, another woman and a small boy . [They] This party had no appliances, worked with their bare hands. There were large sections of roof and walls to be torn apart. The only effective implement would have been a gigantic crane which could [might] have lifted the heavy masses of woodwork off the people buried beneath. They could hear the cries of the people underneath the ruins, shrieking or sobbing or giving directions. The next house to the one they were working on was on fire. He was told there were four children in it burning alive. The parents “went on like maniacs”. The man when rescued was uninjured but his wife was severely cut. One eye was gone, she kept her hand over it so that her husband could not see her injury. At one o’clock Cobb was exhausted and had to give up. He made his way into the city along Campbell Rd. Over the debris and among the corpses. The dead seemed to him to have been drowned. He did not know how the railway tracks and North St. Station could ever be cleared of the wreckage which encumbered them.

[For Clr. 13.] written at top of page