Miner Tell Gripping Story of Rescue by Pal
After Giving Up Fight
"A sort of muffled boom, a long distance off.
"The thing came gradually, a puff and then a sort of gentle pushing. Then it came with a rush. Half a minute later came the main blasts, twice as strong as the original. Then everything was quiet."
This is the romantic highlight in the simple story of a man who went through the Mather mine disaster - and escaped while nearly 200 of his buddies died. His tale of simple heroism - how his buddy, "Beatty," refused to leave him when he was past hope and ready to die - it is a human document. In his little cottage home while his wife listened as to a man back from the dead, C.A. Benjamin, 30, veteran of the fields of France, dictated his story to the Post-Gazette staff man. It is reproduced here just as he encounted it.
Dramatically, because simply he tells how their little group of three, he forgot about the third man until the close of his story becaus ehe died anyway after they got him out - bratticed the opening to a room in the mine with canvas, dug a hole and in it put their safety lamps so that they would be warned of the approach of the deadly black damp whch always seeks the lowest level. Then they wrapped up in canvas and alternately watched and slept.
But an important part of the story Benjamin doesn't write . pg 10
How after he was rescued and filled up on hot coffee he went back into the mine with a rescue crew and worked all night to try to save his fellow miners.
By C. A. Benjamin - "I had gone to the mine with the night shift to cut coal for the day shift that was to have followed the next day. C. R. Beatty, my helper, was with me. We were about to pass through the door to the room where we were to begin cutting when we heard the explosion.
"It was not a loud noise. Nothing like the explosion of high explosive shells, or anything like that. Just a sort of muffled boom, and it seemed to be some distance off. We were about two miles underground.
Me and Beatty, we just dived head first into a crack - there was a split in the walls for air to pass between entries, and that is where we landed, our feet sticking out.
"We lay still, not knowing what to expect or what to do. Half a minute later came another blast - twice as strong as the original blast, it seemed. I thought the rush of air and gas across the end of that opening was going to take my feet off. Then everything quieted down.
"Buddy, are you still there," I shouted to Beatty.
"Yes, I'm all right, but you - are you hurt?" pg 11
"I told him I wasn't hurt."
We just lay there a few minutes, then we began to figure out what to do to get out of there. We looked about. The air was filled with dust. We could watch every air current there by the flow of the dust, and we always stayed in the cleanest air.
"While we were looking, we searched for our dinner buckets. Beatty was heart-broken, his bucket had been blown to a thousand pieces, but mine wasn't touched. We had a drink of cold coffee then started.
"For a while we worked down with the air toward the air shaft. Then we saw we couldn't do it. We were choked with dust, our eyes were stinging with gas. Our throats were burning and our hearts were speeded up by the gas so much we had to stop and rest every few minutes.
"Our safety lamps went out and we knew that that meant black damp and death if we stayed there. I was done in and I told Beatty to go and leave me, I was in a sort of stupor. But Beatty wouldn't leave me. He slapped me and pounded me until he got me awake enough to want to get out. Then he helped me, for I was about done for. You see I always have been a heavy smoker, my heart and lungs didn't stand up so well in that gas. But Beatty didn't smoke and he stood it better. But when he got into fresh air, pg 12
my strength came back and Beatty's went. Funny.
"We got back to the crack where we had been. We could see the smoke move past, but we were in comparatively clean air. We went into a room where the air seemed better and bratticed the opening with canvas.
"We cut a hole near the bottom for fresh air, and dug a little pit at the bottom. We put our safety lamps in the pit - black damp always goes to the bottom and we knew that if our light went out black damp was coming. Then Beatty and I rolled up together in a piece of canvas to keep warm and took turn about sleeping and watching the safety lamp for black damp. We must have slept several hours.
"When we first went into that room we heard doors closing further down the pit and we knew there were other men alive there. We tried to make it to some of them but we couldn't, the gas was too heavy. Well, we joked awhile and then we wrote in the walls with a piece of chalk I found in my pocket: "spitting smoke and tobacco juice at 10:00 p.m." is what we wrote once. Then we put the date there and signed our names. Then we rolled up the canvass and looked out. The air seemed to be better and clearer. We supposed the fans were beginning to make a difference, and we decided to make a try for the air shaft. We had gone about two-thirds of the way. On the way out we met the first rescue squad coming in. They stopped and looked in astonishment. All they could say was: pg 13
"What do you know about that - three of them walking out." I forgot, there was another man, a foreigner, but he died after we got out. We found him when we first started out to try to get where we heard men slamming doors. He was going to go on and lay tracks in his entry, but I picked up a stone and threatened to kill him if he didn't come with us. He finally realized that it was dangerous and I didn't have to use the rock.
"Yes, he was with us the rest of the time, but I find it hard to remember him. It seemed there was just Beatty and me."
Post-Gazette, Monday 21 May, 1928
To Read Part III
