Great Circus Train Wreck of 1918, The: Tragedy on the Indiana Lakeshore (Disaster) by Richard M. Lytle

Author:Richard M. Lytle [Lytle, Richard M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2010-07-22T14:00:00+00:00

Henry was not the only one who remembered that terrible cry; “Bud” Gorman, the equestrian director and circus horse master, heard it too. He returned to consciousness with a dead man lying on his chest. Beneath him, he could feel the jagged slivers of a broken board stabbing into his back. He managed to wriggle to freedom and quickly realized that flames were sweeping his way. Close by, he saw that some of the female survivors had spotted different men pinned under the debris and were hysterically trying to remove them. Assisted by clowns, now minus their makeup and costumes, the effort was failing, and the half-conscious victims, helpless under the crushing debris, were screaming: “Shoot me! Kill me! Don’t let me be burned alive!”60

Mayme and Ed Ward were married in 1912 while on the road with the Ringling Brothers Circus. In 1914, they joined the Hagenbeck-Wallace Show, and by the early summer of 1918, they were the parents of two lively youngsters, one four years old and the other six months. Fortunately, the children were in the charge of Grandma Ward in Bloomington, Illinois. Mayme and Ed were in the lead sleeper, as befitted the stars of the Flying Wards, which also included Ed’s sister, Jennie, and her husband, plus three others.

Mayme Ward later remembered that she was suddenly jolted back into an uncomprehending consciousness from a deep sleep. For one fleeting moment, she felt as if she were a contortionist. While she was on her back, her mattress had folded tightly and completely back; she was painfully aware that her feet were clear above her head, and she was in a rigid and immobile position. Almost stifled, she heard Alec W. Todd, her sister’s husband, ask in a strangled tone, “You all right?”

She answered that she was and then said, “But I can’t move.”

Her brother-in-law pushed something, and she gradually was able to work her way out into the car’s aisle. A moment later, he also wriggled free. The floor was a mess of jagged splinters, but Mayme and Alec did not notice it at the time. The roof of the car had slid down on their side, crushing the upper berth onto them.

Then Mayme heard a voice from above them saying, “Give me your hand. I’ll pull you up.” It was Charley Rooney, one of the bareback riders. As she went up, her long braided hair caught on projecting fragments of wood. “I didn’t know you were so heavy,” Rooney panted and then harshly jerked her up. Her hair parted company with her scalp, and she was suddenly up in the cool night air.

In the dim dawning light, she stared at chaos, utter chaos. What was a locomotive doing just opposite her, tilted slightly away and breathing out steam heavily? Why was she staring downward from a height above a telegraph pole? Theirs was the fourth car from the end, not counting the caboose. Where were the other cars? What was all this mass of steel and

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