BARONESS’S WAR RECORD

Evening Star, Issue 20256, 17 August 1929, Page 20

BARONESS’S WAR RECORD

“ MOTHER OF BRITISH ARMY " ADVENTURES IN 19. H. r«—-"'-"j The Baronno do la Grange, known to officers and men who served in the Messines Ridge sector of the Flanders trenches as “ The Mother of the British Army,” recently paid a visit to London. During the war her chateau of La Motto aux 'Bois, which stands in the middle of the Forest of Nieppe, about midway between Merville and Hazcbrouck, was occupied by corps staffs, while Madame do la Grange was herself in residence. She left it for the first time at the urgent request of General de Lisle, then commanding the loth Corps, when the Germans captured Merville, ‘and advanced to within I,2ooyds of her residencela conversation, Madame de la Grange recalled her experiences in 191-I. when she sent an urgent appeal for help to the Governor of Dunkerque.

“ .The situation was so threatening that I decided to send for help to Dunkerque if possible,” she said. “ The only way I was able to do so was by supplying a fugitive ooldier wit*, civilian-clothes, and sending him there with a letter to the Governor explaining the situation in detail.” The result of tins action was the arrival of Commander Samson, of the Royal Plying Corps, with an aeroplane and three machine guns. .He w r as the first British soldier whom Aladame cle la Grange had ever seen. “Their uniforms were so different from those o. our own troops that I thought they were Germans,” she observed. “So convinced was I that they were our enemies who had caught the man with whom I had entrusted the letter, and had come to shoot me, that I shouted to him in German; ' Was wollen Sie ?• Commander Sampson replied, ‘ Do yoti speak English?’ and I do not think that I ever experienced so great a feeling of relief in my life.” Not only did the Baroitne do la Grange take part in September, 1914, in the first motor car reconnaissance undertaken by Commander Samson in the district, sitting beside him in the car the whole time, but she helped, to dig the first trenches sunk in the .sector, and which were to bo the scenes of such desperate fighting later on Twenty-four ‘ hours after Commander Samson’s arrival a battalion of Britisi, infantry followed him under the command of “Jack” Churchill.

From November. 1914, General (nott Field-Alarshal) Allenby was the guest of the baronne until ho took over the command of the Third Army in June, the following year. He was followed at various times by Generals Byng, Pulteney, Birdwood (commanding the Anzacs), Godley, Ducane, and.de Lisle. From the diary which she kept during the whole of the war period, Madame de la Gauge has written a book of memoirs, to which Field-Alar-shal Viscount Allenby has contributed an introduction. Throughout the period dealt with in her diary, she also took numbers of photographs of the greatest historical interest. “Of course, x was not supposed to do this,” concludes the baronne. “ When the intelligence officers pointed this out to me, I replied that that vis precisely why I was doing it. The officers always laughed in reply, and turned their backs. 1 was careful, however, to develop ah the plates myself, and never to let the negatives and prints out of my possession,”