GIRLS’ COURAGE PRAISED

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23349, 7 June 1941, Page 10

GIRLS’ COURAGE PRAISED

CONDUCT IN AIR RAIDS WORK AS DRIVERS WITH ' SERVICES (P.S.S.) AUCKLAND, June 6. The cool courage displayed by mere girls in the various services during enemy air raids on Britain was the subject of enthusiastic comment by Mr J. S. Storey, who constitutes the Australian Government Aircraft Production Commission, ’who arrived by the Honolulu Clipper frohi the United States on Thursday. Mr Storey, who was on his way back to Australia, was in Britain , only three weeks ago, and himself experienced several heavy raids, including the one on London on April 16. " Mr Storey said that while the people generally displayed great bravery, the courage of the girls in the services was outstanding. He told how these young women, driving mobile canteens, ambulances, and other motor vehicles associated with essential services, ignored, bombs, going quietly about their work while great fires raged and invisibles Nazi raiders dropped high-explosive bombs into the heart of the target—fires created by their incendiaries. “The firskwave of German aeroplanes usually carries only incendiaries, and dumps these on the city below to start fires to guide following machines carrying high-explosive bombs,” Mr Storey said. “The gir.s know this, of course, but as soon as a fire breaks out and homeless people are left in the vicinity, up come the mobile canteens, driven by girls, to be parked as close as possible to serve refreshments to the bombedout people. Driving Close to Danger “These girls are magnificent. The natural instinct is to get as far away as possible from these fires, because high explosive bombs come down in the vicinity, but the girls drive as near as they can get. When they hear a bomb coming they throw themselves on their faces, and after the explosion they get up again and carry on.” Mr Storey also cited the case of a girl —an Australian wbrking in London—who calmly spent the night of April 16, when London was heavily raided, walking in Hyde Park, "because she would rather, die in the open if she had to die.” She was unhurt. Two other girls, occupants of a flat in a large block, had always made a practice of assembling with other tenants on the ground floor during raids In a big attack recently, however, they decided to stay in their upstairs room, and a land mine dropped by parachute fell outside the building and killed ail the people sheltering on the ground floor. The two girls were theonly survivors in the building. Only in their night-dresses they found their way to the street, where a motorist picked them up and took them to his home. His wife put them to bed, but an hour or so later they were rudely awakened. Another land mine had embedded itself in the garden outside their host’s house, and might explode at any moment. The girls had to move again, but reported for work next morning as usual.