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Personal narrative by Harold Connolly.

transcription (read by actor)

Two men I knew well had miraculous escapes. William "Pee Wee" Shea had been standing watching the fire that preceded the explosion. They were perhaps a little better than a mile from the actual scene. The men on either side of him were killed. Shea woke up in intense darkness. He thought it must have been night. He realized he must have been on the ground and he wondered what had happened. He called his friends, but there was no response. Then he heard a voice which he recognized calling as if in search of someone. He shouted and the voice answered. The next thing Bill knew he was in a bed at Camp Hill Hospital suffering great pain. He was temporarily blind which accounted for the blackness. They later amputated an eye, fixed up his battered leg but they could do nothing with the livid blue scars that creased his face. He lived with all the evidences of the explosion for the rest of his life. He was forced to walk with a limp and he used to say "You know I ought not to be alive."

The second one was the priceless character and I say character endearingly, Bernard "Kid" O'Neill. He lived then in the north end and he had been watching the fire from the roof of his house. The house had a basement kitchen. When the blast came "Kid" was catapulted though the roof of the house, through the first and second floors to the basement kitchen. The house, all but the basement, was completely demolished. He was found some hours later by a rescue squad. In some unaccountable manner a leg of the coal stove had imbedded itself in his chest. His face was lined with livid blue scars so common to explosion victims. He was rushed to hospital where he was not expected to recover. But he did, and lived to be 80, dispensing charity and good cheer; always with the traces of the blue scars on his face and the healed-over wound in his chest.