KENDAL CRASH 1957: A school’s role in search and rescue

“Train crash! Train crash! Help is needed, all cadets are needed to rescue the injured!” shouted Neville Gallimore in the corridors of Cedar Hall, the men’s dormitory at West Indian Training College (WITC). It was the wee hours of the morning in Mandeville on September 1, 1957, when the news reached the institution, and Gallimore, student leader of the Medical Cadet Corps at the school sprang into action. The group had been trained in first-aid and medical response by school physician, Dr Alwyn Parchment.

Leslie McMillan, a student from The Bahamas, who had registered in January and immediately joined the Medical Cadet Corps, recounts: “I pulled on my clothes, and along with Gallimore and two others rushed to the school gate where Neville hailed a passing car, telling the driver ‘Train crash and we are going to help’, and asked for a ride to the site in Kendal. I didn’t even know what a train looked like”.

They were dropped off in the vicinity of the railway station and began their trek through the bushes to connect with the train tracks. It was dark, about 3 a.m., and there was no street light. McMillan recounts: “As we were close to the tracks, to the left I saw a dead body! I immediately felt like turning back, but we were there on a mission to render help. Then we heard moans and cries for help. As we rounded the curve the tragedy came into full view. On the side of the ravine we could see the box cars piled on top of each other, maybe about 13.”

WAR ZONE

McMillan described the scene as looking like a war zone, and the carnage was evident as they looked down the hillside. They joined the lines of individuals going up and down in the darkness, bringing survivors and bodies from the wreck. Persons lit fires on the hillside to the right creating eerie movements in the flickering light. Soon, more students, faculty and staff from the school joined in the rescue efforts.

Dr Alwyn Parchment had worked all day in health clinics in the parish tending to more than 100 patients, and soon after reaching home that night his phone rang advising of the crash and the need for help. He sent his wife Jill to alert the Medical Cadet Corps and faculty and staff at the school while he headed down the hill to Kendal. Other medical personnel, students and community individuals worked for hours to free victims. The bauxite company brought their heavy equipment to clear a path so the rescue effort could be expedited, ambulances and transportation were brought in to help.

McMillan recalls a man telling him ‘I was sleeping up there on top of the baggage’ pointing to a box car still on the tracks.

“The dead and the living were brought up the hill and put in piles or helped by persons with medical expertise,” McMillan relates. “My schoolmate, Cuthbert Mead, held together the head and torso of someone who had lost his life, he took him up the ravine and gently laid the corpse near the train tracks. We saw everything: bodies, limbs, heads, dismembered parts and we heard the moans and cries.”

He continues: “Our movements were almost robotic, we didn’t feel nauseated despite the blood and the mangled bodies. We worked without gloves and protective equipment; we were there to help although the enormity of the situation could have been overwhelming.”

McMillan recalls the names of other WITC students and cadets who participated in the rescue mission including Keith ‘Skipper’ Douce, Pearnel Charles Snr, Leroy Gray, Lester C. ‘Sarge’ Thomas and many other students and teachers whose names he didn’t know yet as a freshman.

As dawn came eerily into the valley, people brought food and hot tea, and the WITC group stopped long enough to eat and then returned to the task at hand. “We were there to offer whatever assistance we could. WITC students were trained as first responders. Our school taught us that our role included helping others, our response was natural. Our community, our nation needed help, and we volunteered,” says McMillan.

CATASTROPHIC TRIP

The reports were that approximately 200 people died in the tragedy and more than 700 were injured. In the following weeks the newspaper had lists of names, some with photographs of missing people, all thought to have been on the catastrophic trip. Families were searching for their loved ones.

“It feels like yesterday. The scenes are forever etched in my mind; from the first body I saw when we neared the tracks, making me want to turn back; to the little girl who was pinned under the railroad car who cried and moaned,” McMillan relates. “We couldn’t help because the weight of the car was too great for us to move. Her little frame was later released when the bauxite heavy equipment lifted the wreckage above her, upon enquiring we were told that she later died. So, too, the female with red hair and reddish features whose torso was mixed with oil as it hung out of one of the openings of the rubble of the box cars in the ravine.”

West Indian Training College (now Northern Caribbean University) received a plaque and Jamaica Certificate of Merit for service in connection with the Kendal Railway Disaster. Documents related to this recognition were signed by Chief Minister, Norman W. Manley, and the Acting Governor John Stow. The Institute of Jamaica’s documentation notes, “Staff, cadets and students of WITC helped in first-aid, rescue and relief work all night.”

As our nation remembers the second worse train crash in the world which happened in Kendal, Manchester on September 1, 1957, we sympathise with those who lost loved ones or who never found their family members to bury them. We are thankful for those who assisted in search and rescue, the medical personnel who worked tirelessly, those who fed the hungry workers and the bauxite company which created access to the site and a path to remove the wounded. We thank West Indian Training College, now Northern Caribbean University, for its contribution to the search and rescue efforts and its continued commitment to humanitarian endeavours.

*Dr Leslie McMillan, a graduate of West Indian Training College (now Northern Caribbean University), is a retired minister of religion living in Florida who was interviewed by Beverly Henry who served the university in several administrative positions.