EXTRAORDINARY STORY

Evening Star, Issue 20180, 21 May 1929, Page 12

EXTRAORDINARY STORY

WGMAII SERVES IH THE WAR

MEMOIR, l-'Ol'M) AFTER DEATH. Jiujuiiics w hick were made alter Hie recovery from tlie Thames of tho body of Minnie Drewelt, aged fifty, horn in Edinburgh, who iv;b employed as a cook at .Richmond and London hotel-, elicited tho fact that she had told friends she was wounded in the war while serving as a private with the Australian forces. She had informed others that she was wounded while with the Women's Auxiliary Aid Corps. Miss Drewett left a memoir in which she stated that she was the daughter of a bootmaker whom Queen \ icioria frequently commanded to come to Balmoral. She quarrelled with her parents, and travelled the world. She then became a cook at Aldershot, but tho officer married, and she again songhc work. She was with her family at Fremantle when war was declared. She offered herself as a, cook at “ The Australian Recruiting Office, where tho medical examination was perfunctory. f went in as a. woman trembling in the unaccustomed male attire, ami came out, .strutting in khaki uniform, as J^i.l.sO - -’. Riivate. George Dreweti. “ 1 wont to England on a troopship." tho memoir continues, “and was suspected only by an o.\-modiea! student, named Carl, who died, in unarms at a. French first-aid post, after T confessed that I was a woman. ” Then f. foil in love with a man. hut did not disclose my sex, f wept like a woman when ho was killed. I. went to Tldworth comp (Wiltshire), and courted girls. One at Andover (Hampshire) who wanted to marry me was ill-treated by an Irishman, whom i thrashed.” Drowctt’s reminiscences cover her jvromotioii to lance-corporal, her reduction to the ranks, her confinement to barracks, her shrapnel wound in the month and head, and the discovery of her sox at Xetlev Hospital, which the Prince of Wales visited, and commended her on her pluck, afterwards recalling the incident when he saw her at the British Legion parade at Hastings.

A wnniiiii similarly named was charged with drunkenness at Hastings in 1927. Site said that she had been throe times wounded while serving as a cook in the Australian Force*. lint the allegation was not investigated. Although AT iss Drawoffs memoir gave her imother as 150,302. the milk tnrv nnihoritios at t.he Base 'Records Office, Melbourne, fate i hat there was no Midi nmnher in the Australian Forces.