Background Blitz - March 18, 1937 (closed - no entries)

[jwalt]

So, you all fouled up and let me host another competition. Don't you remember my Coloring Ball? What a disaster! I shall endeavor to turn this Blitz into a disaster, too. Which one, however? So many to choose from... More every day…

The London Blitz was a disaster. But a Blitz Blitz seems, somehow, redundant. Were there any disasters so disastrous that even Hitler might have sent his condolences to the affected nation? Have to be before the war, before he earned his evil reputation, 1930s, maybe? Indeed there was.

It even takes place in a disastrous place, Texas. I know; I'm a “Greenie.” Ponch may be the only good thing about Texas.

March 18, 1937

Criteria will be fairly standard:
     How well will the image work as a game background?
     How well does the image convey the emotions of that moment in time?
     How well does the image work technically?
Go forth into ruin, and destruction, and loss.

If anyone is totally unable to figure out what the heck I'm referring to, post and I shall respond with a bit more information. For now, let it be in the nature of a mystery, a puzzle, if you will.

Edit1:

Got to thinking you folks might not have time to go on a lengthy search, so hints might be in order:

[imgzoom]https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/sites/default/files/public/tslac/exhibits/railroad/other/newlondon.jpg[/imgzoom]

[imgzoom]http://news-journal.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/1/dd/1dd33a98-d305-520d-b427-57795119b32e/4d8198f4f183e.preview-300.jpg[/imgzoom]

And, since most of us, except Ponch, had the good sense to stay out of Texas, a UK link to look at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2114188/Survivor-tells-escaped-school-explosion-killed-293-switching-chairs-classmate.html

[jwalt]

I'll see you at a disaster...

I first became aware of this particular disaster in a fairly round about manner. I have an ongoing interest in looking at the life of Robert J. Casey (1890-1962). Bob was a journalist/author, a reporter, who rolls up nearly twenty-seven years worth of columns, mostly in the Chicago Daily News. This research led me to Hazel MacDonald, who was also a reporter. She will have fewer columns than Casey, and those columns will appear in several different Chicago newspapers. Following the death, in 1945, of Casey's first wife, Miss Hazel MacDonald will become Mrs. Hazel MacDonald-Casey.

In looking at microfilm of some of Hazel's stuff, I came across a promotional ad for the paper in the Chicago Daily Times, from Thursday, June 27, 1940. At this point in time, the “War in Europe” was being covered by both Hazel's and Bob's papers. In fact, the ad has a picture of Hazel in her French War Correspondent uniform; she will be the only female correspondent accredited by the French government prior to the fall of France.

The banner line across the ad reads: “I'll see you â€" at a disaster.”

The text in the ad begins:

On a sunny day last September Hazel MacDonald left the TIMES office for what was then called, suspensefully enough, the “theater of war” in Europe. As she passed an outpost desk in the city room, a stay-at-home-and-glad-of-it reporter asked her: “Suppose you'll run into Bob Casey?" Casey of the News had already reached Europe.
“I suppose so,” said Hazel. “We usually meet at disasters.…”
          Consider the words. Ride back on them a few years…

The promotional ad continues, listing the various disasters/events that Hazel has covered. One of the disasters mentioned is the Texas school explosion.

On March 18, 1937, Bob Casey is down in Mexico on an assignment investigating some Mexican radio stations that are broadcasting ads for medical devices and procedures that had been removed from US airwaves because of false and misleading claims. I suspect he drives north, into Texas, heading for New London.

Hazel's paper charters a plane and flies her down overnight to cover the event.

Both file front page stories the next day, Friday, March 19, 1937:

From The Chicago Daily News
Parents Search Debris; One Boy Is Found Alive
Byline: Robert J. Casey

Overton, Tex. March 19 â€" In every town in this stricken county today lay the shattered bodies of the school children of Overton, Arp, Henderson and Tyler and the once-mad oil towns of Kilgore and Gladewater. They crowded the mortuaries â€" 425 of them â€" victims of yesterday's explosion at the London consolidated school.

Into hospitals and tourist camps and hotels were crowded the maimed and dying as the ambulance trains continued to roll out of the fog and mud of the valley south of Overton.

In the debris of what had been the largest and best-equipped rural school in the country oil field workers swarmed with derricks and steam shovels and tractors searching beneath an unidentifiable pile of bricks and knotted girders for twenty-seven persons, some of whom they hope may still be alive.

And over the hill road from Dallas in a speeding truck fleet came a shipment of some 200 coffins, the largest cargo of its sort ever seen in this section of the country…

From the Chicago American
Many Unidentified, Towns Filled With Child Victims
Byline: Hazel MacDonald

Overton, Tex. March 19 â€" For Thirty miles around here there was scarcely a child beyond fifth grade alive today.

Groaning derricks poked into the heaped ruins of the finest school house in Texas' opulent oil district, bringing up crushed little bodies and parts of bodies to confirm estimates that the casualty list of this worst juvenile disaster in American history totals more than 500.

The children, tossed into the air like so many limp, lifeless dolls by the mysterious blast of yesterday, lie in inert piles now in improvised morgues in a half dozen nearby east Texas towns.

The number of injured was in three-to-five ratio to the number who are beyond the need of hospital care…

Edit 11/16/2013

The school before the explosion:

[imgzoom]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-C5TxyMFbkBM/T2XfFcYkorI/AAAAAAAAAYk/OXx5LM_1NQ0/s400/NewLondonHighSchoolBeforeExplosionTOPtb.jpg[/imgzoom]

And a link to a video:

http://www.newlondonschool.org/videos/NLSE_PatheNews.wmv

Edit 11/18/2013:

Late breaking news... Varous newspapers on March 19, 1937:

Hitler Cables Sympathies to Roosevelt Over Blast

Berlin, Germany, March 19 â€" UP â€" Adolf Hitler sent the following cablegram to President Roosevelt today:

“On the occasion of the terrible explosion at New London, Tex., which took so many young lives, I want to assure your excellency of my and the German people's sincere sympathy.                                                 ADOLPH HITLER, German Reichschancellor.”

Blast Appalls Roosevelt

Warm Springs, Ga. March 19 â€" President Roosevelt, appalled by the tragic school explosion at New London, Tex., announced he had ordered the Red Cross and all other government agencies to “stand by and render every assistance” to the little Texas community.

His statement on the Texas tragedy follows:

“I am appalled by the news of the disaster at New London, Tex., in which hundreds of school children lost their lives.

“A few hours ago I dedicated a school building here in Western Georgia with high hope for the future service it could render. Tonight with the rest of the nation I am shocked and can only hope that further information will lessen the scope of this tragedy.

“I have asked the Red Cross and all of the government agencies to stand by and render every assistance in their power to the community to which this shocking tragedy has come.”

Undertaker Tells Horror of Blast - Mangled Remains May Never Be Identified, Says Mortician

Dallas, March 19 â€" UP â€" The most appalling aspects of the London Consolidated School disaster were described today by two Dallas undertakers who cared for some of the twisted bodies of the hundreds of child victims. Jerome Crane said:

“Indescribable is an inadequate word. We went to the Overton funeral home. There were seventy-five bodies there. At least twenty of them never will be identified, unless parents are able to do so from remnants of clothing.

”Barton Beatty and I cared for the bodies of seventeen children between the ages of 10 and 17. They were the most horribly mangled remains of human beings either of us had ever seen…”

Gas Leak is Blamed By Superintendent

New London, March 19 â€" William C. Shaw, superintendent of the New London school, identified one of the bodies recovered from Thursday's explosion in a morgue early Friday.

It was that of his 17- year-old son, Clifton (Sambo) Shaw.

A man of 61, the superintendent seemed to have aged ten years overnight. His hands shook like those of a man suffering palsy. One of them was bandaged, injured in the explosion. His cheeks were flecked with dried blood from lacerations caused by flying glass.

Relatives tried to keep Shaw at home but he defied them. He plodded about the ruins on trembling legs and spoke frankly…

Dallas â€" Coffin makers were swamped with orders for medium sized caskets in which to bury victims of the London Consolidated School tragedy.

[jwalt]

Bump...

Two days left. Hope someone submits something! Anyone know the protocol if no one enters? Who runs the next one?

[Adeel]

I believe that you should start another round too because none came to claim your position, after all.

[jwalt]

Reluctant to do that, since this one crashed and burned. Hoped Iceboty V7000a would offer some advice on what should happen next. Adeel, have an idea for the next Blitz? If I start a second one, they still may not come out and play. It could go on forever. I don't want to be the guy who killed the Blitz.

[Adeel]

Well......don't be so nervous and go ahead. Some ideas fail and some ideas succeed. But don't let the failed ideas destroy you. Start a new blitz with another theme. Be confident and don't blame yourself. I'm sure you'll succeed this time. Please, start another round.

[jwalt]

Okay, subject to moderator approval. I'll post something very shortly.