SCOTSWOMAN SERGEANT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 36, 10 February 1917, Page 16

SCOTSWOMAN SERGEANT.

I x WBer IN ATTACK WITH THB SERBIAN TBOOPS. Obtaining permission to serre as a p* rate In the Serbian Army, a Scotswoman, Miss Flora Sandea. was horribly wounded after serring through an arduous campaign. For more than three months, relates Mr. Frederick Calvert In a dispatch describing ■ his Tislt to Miss Sandes (Sergeant Sendee las she is now), in hospital at Salonika, this i-heroic woman lived in an atmosphere of I bursting shells and whistling ballets, J through many a hand-to-hand encounter she ! passed acathless, clambering up in the in- . tervala each or those towering heights I from which the Serbs drove the BuJgaroI Germans, steadily fighting their way north- | ward from Gornitehevo and Kajwalschalan j to the mountain that is known as Hill 1212. j There, however, luck deserted her. It -was Jlβ the decisive assault on the highest rcest lof that position that Miss Sandes' active career was temporarily cut short. How this happened let her relate In her ' own words:— J "We had been crouching and shivering lin our little shallow pits for hours, waiting Impatiently lor the order to break cover and attack. At 7 a.m. the crder came. It waa snowing and snow lay on the ground. I waa out of my pit in half a second, and running as fast as my legs could more. "I am always the first to leave cover. It la my dnty as a petty-om>er. But, unfortunately, I am not co nimble as most of my men, so it happens that I am generally among the last to reach an empty trench. "Well, I bad nearly reached the brink of the Bnlgsrian trench in which our men were already at grips with the defendera. I was one of a small group of lapearde— perhaps half a dozen—when a well-aimed grenade fell in onr midst. A couple of men I besides myself were in the radius of iv explosion and fell wounded, but I seem to 1 have got most , of the scatter." Miss Sandea' wounds will take some time to heal completely. There are some twentyflve of them, and one or two splinters have yet to be extracted. Bnt the surgeons tell her Bbc may rely upon recovering the ore of her Injured limbs.