I did not hear a second explosion. There is no more horrible or pitiable sight possible than the sight of the faces of mothers and babies and girls here in the morgues.
Weighing all the facts soberly convinces me that it was only through the mercy of God that any one was saved. I sailed from America that I might offer my services as a surgeon. I have visited the Valley of Death and am heartsick.
VII—STORY OF FUNERAL OF "LUSITANIA'S" DEAD—TOLD BY AN EYE-WITNESS
Ninety-two passengers of the Lusitania who formed part of that pitiful handful of maimed, dead and dying brought ashore with the survivors of the disaster that followed the attack on the vessel by a German submarine were buried with services that have no parallel in history. Under a sky in which not a single cloud floated and to the strains of hymns played by British soldiers they were laid to rest two miles behind Queenstown in a cemetery bursting with spring greenery and tucked between hills flaming with gorse. The services at the graves began at four o'clock, and at half-past four the sod of Ireland was being shovelled upon the coffins.
Queenstown sensed the full horror of the Lusitania disaster. Up to the time that the long stream of coffins began to disappear over the hill behind the town there was about the affair, what with the continued searches for survivors and the bustle about the morgue, something of the unusual and theatric. But when the funeral started the realization came that each of these cheap coffins held a body and that in the Atlantic, less than twenty miles away, there were more than a thousand in addition, all victims of a German submarine.
The townsfolk stood hatless nearly all forenoon as the coffins were conveyed to the cemetery on carts. This process required hours, and it was not until three o'clock in the afternoon that the funeral procession proper left the Cunard offices at the waterfront. There were only three bodies, one each in a hearse, in this cortège, the other eighty-nine already having been placed in the graves.
With the British army band playing Chopin's "Funeral March" the funeral procession marched through the crooked streets past the cathedral, which stands on the highest point of the town, and then took its course along an undulating country road, now rising and now sinking between green hills. Along this road country folk were clustered for the most part, perched on stone fences behind the soldiers who guarded the road the entire two miles from the cathedral to the cemetery. Those waiting in the graveyard first heard, borne faintly on the soft breeze, the notes of the funeral march and then the sound of muffled drums. A moment later the sun flashed on the band instruments and the cortège took form in the distance. Not for more than an hour, however, did it reach the lane bordering the cemetery, which it entered in the following order:—
A major of the Royal Irish infantry on horseback, five members of the Irish Constabulary and a group of Protestant churchmen, then in black robes came thirteen priests, and behind them were the hearses, draped with British flags, to the rear of which trudged the mourners, among them several American survivors of the disaster.
The sailors from the steamship Wayfarer, which was recently torpedoed but was able to make port, came next, and behind them the members of the Corporation of Cork, headed by the Lord Mayor. A company of marines followed and then came sailors of the various British ships in harbor. The British officers, numbering a hundred odd, marched erect but slow. Next in line were captains Miller and Castle, Attachés of the American Embassy in London. Both were dressed in khaki uniforms. A party of British naval officers and Admiral Sir Charles Coke, of Queenstown, followed them. The Most Reverend Robert Browne, Bishop of Cloyne, rode in a carriage.
The procession was a full hour in passing into the cemetery. There soldiers guarded the walls as six other soldier pallbearers lifted the coffins from the hearses and set them beside the graves. The three coffins rested beside separate graves. The other eighty-nine had previously been placed in three great pits—sixty-five in one, in layers two deep, and twelve each in the other two. Conducted by Bishop Browne, the Catholic service was held first, the choir boys bearing incense, appearing from a cluster of elms and coming to the graveside. The Church of Ireland service, that is, the Protestant Episcopal, followed, and finally the non-conformist rites were performed. As the last words of this service were spoken the muffled drums rolled and the familiar hymn, "Abide with Me," swelled forth. Sailors who had replaced the soldier pallbearers then lowered the coffins into the small graves, and simultaneously the earth began to thud on the coffins in all the graves. The crowd, nearly all with eyes wet, slowly left, some to take jaunting cars, but most of them to trudge across the fields of the city. As they reached the crest of the hill immediately above the harbor flashed into view and in it the flag of every vessel fluttered at half mast.