Sydney Girl’s Thrilling Escape

Greymouth Evening Star, 11 May 1929, Page 9

Sydney Girl’s Thrilling Escape

Afghans Resort to Grim Torture

of the first of the white refugees from troubled Kabul to reach Europe is Miss Molly Marter, an Australian girl from Sydney, who was employed in a secretarial position at the Court of King Amanullah up till the time of the flight of the King and Queen, and was one of the last of the white women to leave Kabul when the troubles assumed a serious aspect.

Miss Marter, who has had a good deal of Ihdian experience since leaving her Sydney home, said to a Paris correspondent of a Sydney newspaper that the position in Kabul was more serious than was realised from the outside. “Ever since the King and Queen returned from Europe,” she said, “the anti-European feeling was growing, and it was brought to a head by the clever use the malcontents made of the leaning of the King and Queen for European dress and institutions. “Curiously enough, the Royal couple were strongly anti-English, and so far as the anti-European feeling was a manifestation against England they were content to encourage it; but it was the irony of fate that this same feeling should have driven them from their throne and subjected them to grave peril. “It was soon apparent that the loyalty of even the most trusted troops of the Royal household could not be relied on, and every night we lived in dread lest the palace should be rushed and everyone in it put to the sword. For eight days before the end came sleep, was impossible for most of us, and it was a particularly trying time for those of us of British nationality. “The Queen told us that we were free to seek . the protection of the British Legation, but that was easier said than done, because the adjoining streets were held by armed tribesmen, who would have thought nothing of cutting the throats or whites venturing outside, and there had been a number of incidents to impress on us the need for caution in this respect.

“Finally, it was decided that a few of us who were British subjects ushonfd try to reach the British resi-

dency, and we set out early in the morning. Immediately we got outside the gates of the palace we were surrounded by a menacing mob, and the troops acting as escort showed no disposition to be too zealous in protecting us. Two women of the party were very seriously handled, and it might have gone worse with us had not the King in person arrived to exhort his troops to make efforts to snatch us from the hands of the mob. “After some rough-and-tumble fighting, we got back inside the palace, and gave up for the time being the idea of escape on foot.

“It was after this that it was decided to seek the aid of the British Air Force in getting clear, and when planes arrived we decided that we would rather risk the perils of the air than those of the mob-thronged streets of the native quarter, through which we must pass to safety on foot. “When the planes took off they were witnessed from the , hills and the housetops by excited tribesmen, who took pot shots at the machines; but, fortunately, were unable to do any damage.

“My own thrills were not finished with running the gauntlet of this fire. To our horror something seemed to gO' wrong with our plane, and: it started to zigzag downward. The prospect was a terrible one, because it seemed a cross between falling into the hands of the tribesmen and of being dashed to death on the rugged hills beneath us. “Fortunately, just when it seemed that we were going to crash on the hills, the machine righted itself, and we soared into the clouds again. I can tell you it was a welcome relief to us poor frightened women, one of whom was the wife of an official in the Royal household who was expecting her second baby in a few days.

“One of the victims was a young native who was called on to reveal the secret of a door giving access to the palace under pain of being slowly roasted to death. He refused, z and the threat was carried out, the poor boy’s cries being heard in the stillness of the night for a great distance. His charred body was found the next day, and, though he must have endured hours of agony, he did not betray his secret,”