Word: mosses
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Darkness. A lamp flashed down the shaft 40 ft. below showed that Moss was trapped by the breadth of his shoulders. Ropes were quickly lowered, but Moss was wedged so tightly that he could not move his arms. More serious, the air in the passage was foul. As hours passed, Moss alternately gritted his teeth and joked with the men trying to help him. An oxygen mask was lowered, but there was not even room enough to fit it over his face. After four hours he became delirious, finally drifted into unconsciousness...
Another Go. Flight Lieut. John Carter, an R.A.F. medical officer, kept the unconscious Moss alive by pumping oxygen down a tube. One after the other, eight men were lowered down the shaft, but only three reached Moss, and all blacked out because of the motionless, foul air. None was able to make a head-first descent and keep an oxygen mask over his face. Finally a tiny (5 ft.) printer from Derby named Ron Peters, 25, got close enough to be able to touch the trapped man's shoulder but began to gasp for air, had to be pulled...
...hope faded, workers began chipping away with crowbars and hammers to widen the shaft. Air purification equipment was brought in, but the canister proved too big to get into the shaft. Hooks were lowered on ropes and inserted in Moss's clothing, and he was raised another foot, only to get stuck again...
...Helmet, Red Sweater. Thirty-two hours had passed, and Moss was reported to be "weakening fast." At 2 o'clock Tuesday morning, in answer to a broadcast appeal for an "expert potholer, less than 5 ft. tall, weighing under 112 Ibs., exceptionally athletic and with unlimited courage," June Bailey, 18, appeared, a slip of a girl wearing a red helmet and red sweater. She was instructed to break both of Moss's collarbones to help narrow the width of his shoulders and perhaps free him. But before she could enter the shaft, the trapped man had died...
...tunnel's mouth, Cotton Executive Eric Moss, who had been on the site since the news of the accident reached him, said: "I don't want anybody else to risk their lives by trying to get my son's body out. Let's leave him where he is." But rescuers, who thought such a decision "goes right against the grain of every potholer," got permission to drive a new 20-ft. tunnel to get Moss's body out, because "it will teach us a lot in avoidance of future accidents...