It was the frightfulness of the Bund corner explosion duplicated in the heaps of mangled bodies but rendered infinitely more shocking because of the piles of wreckage which covered: the street and from which dreadful sounds came from the Wounded pinned beneath. Water cascaded from a burst water main high up in Sincere's, showered on the dead and ran red in the gutters. For a hundred yards Nanking Road and the three side-streets converging on to the intersection were littered with glass from windows burst by concussion and shell splinters and here and there bodies lay in widening pools, of their own blood.
The three lower floors of Sincere's and Wing On's had taken the full force of steel and concussion and the full width of the huge show rooms were a confusion of blood-stained merchandise and fearsomely. mutilate fed bodies. Dead in the instant of buying, assistants lay on one side of smashed counters and customers fon the other.
People dazed and bleeding from slight injuries wandered about blindly, not yet cognizant of their mira-} culeus escapes. A young Chinese boy ran around, blood spurting from the side of his head. His left ear had been taken off as cleanly as by a surgeon's scapel. A Sikh police man lay riddled with wounds in the crow's nest from which he had been directing traMe and below was one of his fellows grievously hurt.
Rescuers fought their way through wreckage to enter the Wing On building whose steel grilles had only been partly opened. Men with hander chiefs across their faces to stem the stench of fumes and blood worked with their arms and clothes dripping blood. They Ustened for moans and frenziedly hurled debris aside to free victims, oF else they shifted mounds of goods and uncovered bodies beyond. aid.
Ambulances and trucks were fied with the dead, the dying and the wounded, emptied and returned for more dreadful cargos. Beneath Wing On's verandah the corpses were. 30 Showered with dust that they resem= bled mummies. Ironleally, the bodies had. been showered wi' toys. from burst windows. Young Chinese Boy Scouts "performed heroic service. searching for the dead, dressing. the Henly injured with improvised bande ages from. blood. spattered piles materials, and stretcher bearing.
'One of these' young boys performtsk {rom which many & grown man would have shrunk, "One of the Wing On Mite had been Dalted be: {ween the ground and firt floors' as the explosion out off. power. Blood Streamed from the age, the door Which had_been party opened. by ome' injured" berton, before. death had. ended attempts at selt-preservation. "A ladder was run up to the age but the opening was too small for an adult. A. scout: went "up, fesitateg before what he saw, then threw down. a pith helmet' led with blood and performed. the grisly lask of removing the dead.
Over in Sineere's the sume sights of death and destruction were encountered. The dead. -and wounded were hidden in debris." Thay" were Tolatively few and. it wat food for Feflection what wholesale. slaughter
Shopping' emporiums had not "the would Rave happened in thes Mieaicetot war time shortened the Spending of money, or else had. the Entastrophe occurred other than at a time when most of the population of the' quarter had gone' elsewhere for the funeheon interval,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.