Shanghai, Oct. 30. F[HREE men of, the Royal Ulster Rifles were killed, two were seriously injured and several others were slightly hurt early Jast night when high explosive and shrapnel rained down on the Jessfield Park area during a severe bombardment in the closely linked Sino-Japanese combat just westward.
Rifleman James O'Toole and three Chinese died amid the wreckage of a cafe opposite the Park gates; Riflemen James Mahon and William Christopher Howard were killed when a shell burst beside the British advance outpost near the Jessfield Station.
Five of the killed and wounded men were those concerned in the heroic rescue under machine-gun fire of Chinese refugees on Wednesday.
The area known to have been swept by the bombardment reached to Avenue Joffre where the LS.S. Apartment building was struck and a deep hole was gouged in a neighbouring paddock. Tales of amazing escape were plentiful, the luckiest happening to Mrs. A. J. Hughes, in her Great Western Road residence, who was just passing up a stairway with her children when the wall caved in below as a shell smashed through. This morning British military and consular author ies will undertake a full enquiry.
The bombardment began about seven o'clock, and for half an hour the Settlement area from Jessfield to Avenue Joffre was fiery with burst ing shrapnel and the scream and crash of shells. The streets were filled with terrified people, fleeing to safely or what they' thought was the Girection to safety. The flight came a panic when the news caught vp with them that British soldiers had" died" in the holocaust. The had scrambled for cover, thinking their last. minute was upon. them. The air, he said, was livid with shrapnel and big' explosive stuff The sheer impotency of their position 30 near the fighting lines. infuriated the corporal and his men. Up Brenan Road, only Atty yards from the Post. Chinese soldiers could be seen through the gloom tearing up the roadway into defence works.
Royal Ulster Rifles, manning the defence area, were caught in the storm of shelling. There was no Danie in their ranks and those who wore killed died as they stoically made the best of the situation. "The Honeyhand Cafe right opposite the Park gates wag the scene of the first, tragedy. "About 7.20 o'clock a shell—believed to be a six-inch projectilo—ploughed a great hole in the Brassed traMe island in the middle of Brenan Road and sent its burst ff steel into the cate where O'Toole said to, have been having a pot of beer. Three Chinese—two. men and a woman—died in the explosive burst which severed the street high= tension wires and Aung plate glass the width of the road.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.