Word: shafting
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...with a mud floor and a roof that was sometimes no more than 10 in. above their heads. It took them two hours to progress 600 ft. The tunnel suddenly broadened into a fairly large chamber 1,000 ft. beneath the surface. Leading off from the chamber was a shaft measuring 2½ by 1½ ft. A young Oxford student, Neil Moss, 20, led the way but after a few moments' descent, his alarmed cry came back: "I'm stuck! I can't budge an inch...
...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...
...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. "It was a horrid moment," said Flight Lieut. Carter. "There was no sound as I hung my head down the shaft, and I knew he was gone at last...