the gunmen, and then the fire the savage murderers mercilessly started.
The shooting started, she says, when Louis Tikas, Greek leader at the tent colony, protested because the uniformed gunmen trained three machine’ guns on the tent colony.
[Mrs. Snyder said:]
Louis told them not to point their guns at the women and children.
Sunday they tried to break up a ball game our men were playing and some of the men got mad and chased them away. That is why they set up the guns and it was then that Louis objected.
Then they cursed him and fired at him. They must have fired 50 shots at him and he fell down dead. That was early Monday.
Our men all went mad then and got what guns they had and started after the gunmen. Our men were on one side of the tents and the gunmen on the other.
All of us women and children ran down into the cellars which were dug a long time ago when the gunmen first came down here and threatened us with rifles and machine guns.
All day long we lay down there without anything to eat or drink.
I had six children, the oldest eleven, and they all cried.
All through the camp we could hear women shrieking and calling to God and the Virgin to come and save their children. The firing continued and the bullets whistled over us hour after hour, and after a while I heard a woman cursing terribly. Later I heard that she had had her hand shot off at the wrist when she reached up from her cellar and tried to get a pail of water to give her children a drink.
My children begged me for water, and finally little William [Frankie] he was my oldest boy said he was going to get them a drink. So he climbed up out of the cellar and he never came back.
I know now that a bullet tore his head all away. I should have gone for the water myself, but I had to stay with the babies.
Just when it was beginning to get dark the gunmen dashed in among the tents and set fire to some of them. Our tents were all close together and the fire spread fast. All the time they kept shooting into the tents, although they knew our men, with their guns, were all away up in the hills.
I took my children and ran to a deep arroyo (gully) where there were about 50 other women and babies.
Lots of the others, though, were afraid to come out of their cellars and they suffocated under the burning floors side walls, which had been built up of boards.
I don’t see how any men could kill little children like my William and them other poor little things who were shot or burned.
Continue reading “Hellraisers Journal: From the Chicago Day Book: “Women Cried to God to Save Babies From Blood-Mad Brutes”-Ludlow Massacre” →
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