Free Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing by Arnie Bernstein

of the unfolding disaster. The details from Bath indicated a disaster of unprecedented dimensions. Delfs’s response had to be of the highest order. He first sent out a chemical firefighting unit under the supervision of his assistant chief Paul Lefke. Next went a truck with telegraph and telephone equipment. Communications, Delfs knew, were vital.
    The trucks roared toward Bath, sirens wailing. It took just twelve minutes from the time Delfs got the call for the rescue vehicles to arrive on the scene. 75
     
    Assistant Chief Lefke couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d seen disasters before, but nothing in his professional career had prepared him for this. The school looked like a building destroyed by guns or bombs during the world war. Bodies were on the ground, the wounded, the dying, the dead—all children. Adults were running everywhere. Some carried bleeding children; some provided supplies to workers. Others knelt beside small, still bodies. The cries of these parents were ghastly, the sounds of people ripped to the core with sudden grief.
    Their wails were mixed with unearthly sounds emerging from the school rubble, terrified children screaming for deliverance. 76
     
    The chief of security for the Fisher Body Plant, an automobile supply factory, in nearby Flint, was in Bath for the day. He heard the explosion, ran to the scene, and found a telephone. He called his superiors at Fisher, telling them, “Send every man you can to Bath.”
    Next he called the REO Motor Car plant in Lansing. Today the two companies weren’t competitors. 77

    Job Sleight at the roadside saw someone drive by in a Ford pickup. For a moment he thought it was Monty Ellsworth. Slowly he realized it was Andrew Kehoe. What on earth was he doing?
    Kehoe waved and continued driving east. 78
     
    Homer Jennison started his morning with plans to deliver some wheat in town. He filled his cart and flicked the reins of his horses. A machine passed by. The driver looked at Jennison, nodded his head in recognition, and continued onward. The man looked familiar. 79
    Looming in the distance was a farm, its buildings ablaze. Jennison picked up the trot of his horses.
    He saw Job Sleight at the side of the road. He asked about the mysterious driver.
    “Wasn’t that Kehoe?” Jennison called out.
    Sleight replied that he thought it was. 80
     
    Monty Ellsworth drove south from the school, then turned west toward home. He saw Kehoe driving east into town. Kehoe raised his hand, waved at Ellsworth, and gave a strange grin. It struck Ellsworth that he could see both rows of Kehoe’s teeth. 81
     
    One youngster, pedaling his bicycle as fast as he could to get home, passed a Ford truck heading into town. Although the child was distressed, the driver ignored him. 82
     
    Sleight caught a ride to town on the running board of a neighbor’s automobile. A war zone greeted him. Wounded children were laid out in front of Frank Smith’s house.
    Someone asked Sleight to bring water. He got a pail and took water to the children on Smith’s lawn.
    “What’s the matter with me?” asked one boy. “I can’t move.”
    Sleight could see the boy trying to wiggle his shoulder. A fist-sized lump jutted from the child’s head.
    “What is on my left hand?” the child asked.
    It struck Sleight that the boy’s mangled hand looked like a pumice stone. 83
     
    One kindergartner ran wildly from the scene as fast as his legs could move. His mother met him at the door of their home, her eyes glued to the disaster unfolding at the school. Seeing her baby, coming home safe filled her with relief.
    “Why are you carrying that chair?” she asked.
    It was only then that the child realized he’d picked up his chair when he fled the school and carried it all the way home. 84
     
    Monty Ellsworth threw his ropes and a block and tackle set into the back of his Ford. He jumped back in the truck and raced to the disaster zone.
     
    Just after ten o’clock Charles V. Lane, chief of