NEW LONDON — It was like a war zone without the war.

The aftermath of the March 18, 1937, London School explosion left about 300 students and teachers dead and dozens more injured. John Davidson, volunteer at the London Museum on Texas 42 in New London, said hundreds of oil field workers and other volunteers descended upon the scene attempting to rescue survivors of the natural gas explosion and remove the bodies.

Click the image above for an audio slideshow in the survivors own words. Click the image above to see a video on London history. Click the image above for more photos. MORE NEW LONDON STORIES: Cenotaph honors those killed in school explosion  London Museum houses items from tragic day  Cemetery home to 129 killed in blast  Through their eyes: Four survivors discuss how the New London explosion changed them forever  During oil boom, before explosion, the school was the PRIDE of New London  Reporters converge on New London  Odor now added to natural gas  Community gathers to honor those who died in school explosion and those who lived  Faces, forever changed: School blast survivors still unable to talk about those they lost  Remembrances roll as London School graduates gather  Silence was normal for many survivors  A shared pain: London School graduates gather to mark blast's 70th anniversary  Explosion survivor's faith still strong after tragedy

"They estimated 4 million pounds of debris was removed from the scene in the first 17 hours after the explosion," Davidson said. "Makeshift morgues were set up in places like a filling station bay in Overton, where bodies were embalmed."

The community earlier known as London had been renamed New London when they applied for a U.S. Post Office, needed because of rapid growth. Another Texas community, in the Hill Country, already claimed the name of "London, Texas" for its postal facility, so while the school was still called London School, the town itself had been renamed New London in the 1930s.

Texas Gov. James Allred sent Texas Rangers and highway patrolmen to assist local law enforcement personnel. If alive, victims were rushed to area hospitals; if not, the Texas Funeral Directors Association sent 25 embalmers to help in the massive task of preparing the nearly 300 dead for burial, according to a wire story published after the explosion.

Among the items in the London Museum is a portable embalming table like those used at the scene, he said.

Davidson said the discovery of oil in the East Texas Field created a boomtown atmosphere and a largely transient community.

"People came from all over for the jobs in the oil field and brought their families," he said. After the explosion, some of the parents who lost children returned home to places like Illinois, Arkansas and other states, to bury their children, Davidson said.

But rather than leave their new homes, many ended up burying their family members in local cemeteries with the Pleasant Hill Cemetery, about 4 miles southeast of New London, becoming the final resting place for large number of the dead.

Miles Toler, director of the London Museum, said there are 129 graves of known fatalities buried in Pleasant Hill.

"Plus, there's an unmarked grave with body parts that no one knows exactly where it is at the cemetery," Toler said. Davidson said many of the bodies were so disfigured they could only be identified by the clothes the individuals were wearing which parents or other family members recognized.

Felix R. McKnight, a Dallas journalist who covered the London School explosion as a young Associated Press reporter and went on to become co-publisher and editor of the Dallas Times Herald, died in 2004 at age 93.

McKnight's obituary said he was 26 and working in the AP's Dallas bureau when he got an urgent call from a correspondent about a "terrible explosion" at a school in East Texas near Overton. He sent a bulletin across the wire about the gas blast, which killed at least 293.

McKnight was among the first reporters on the scene along with his competitor from United Press, Walter Cronkite.

That night McKnight visited a roller rink in Overton that served as the morgue.

"The force of that explosion was so great that hardly a child was identifiable except for clothing," he said. While there, he was drafted to help sponge down remains with formaldehyde to help preserve them, and the horror kept him awake for five consecutive days.

People can find reminders of the explosion in the dozens of grave sites — all bearing the same death date — in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery, about 4 miles southeast of New London on FM 323.