Almost on the stroke of six o'clock three shells hit Szechuen Road bullings. One struck the metal smoke-slack of the Navy Y.M.C.A, deviated, and wrecked the end cubicle of a row of lavatories on the top floor, fortunately unoccupied at the time. The second struck a Chinese house immediately across the road, smashing through the second storey roof and badly injuring six refugees from Hongkew who were just seated for supper. Nothing could have lived in the little room had not a heavy plaster ceiling taken the first shock of the explosion. Visited later, the building was filled with the stench of blood and the stairways were still slippery from marks of the passage of the wounded to the street.
The third explosion was fraught with an amazing escape of a number of Chinese playing mahjong in a rear room. The shell tore a great jagged hole through thick brickwork and burst harmlessly in a small room stuffed with carpets, That barricade saved the players who were still at their game an hour later. The burst-back from the explosion killed a man in the street below, wounded another, and filled the roadway with debris.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.