EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLIX, 13 May 1929, Page 9

EXTRAORDINARY STORY.

WOMAN SERVES IN THE WAR.

MEMOIR FOUND AFTER DEATH.

LONDON, May 1

Inquiries which were made, after the recovery from the Thames of the body of Minnie Drewejt, aged 50, born at Edinburgh, who was employed as a cook at Richmond and London hotels, elicited the 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 Victoria frequently commanded to come to Balmoral. She quarrelled -with her parents, and travelled the world. She then became a cook at Aldershot, but the- 'officer married, and she again sought work. She was with her family at Fremantle when war was declared. She offered herself as a cook at * £ the Australian Recruiting Office, where the medical examination was perfunctory. I went in as a woman trembling in the unaccustomed male attire, and came out, strutting in iftiaki uniform, as 180S02, Private George Drewett. “I went to England on a troop~ship,” the meoir -continues, “and was suspected only by 'an ex-medical student, named Carl, who died in my arms at a French first-aid post, after I confessed that I was a woman, “Then I fell in love, with a man, but did not disclose my sex. 1 wept like a woman when he was lulled. I went to Tidwor.tli ‘Gamp (Wiltshire), and courted girls. One- at Andover (Hampshire) who wanted to, ma'rry me was ill-treated by an Irishman, whom I thrashed.”

Drewett’s reminiscences cover her promotion to iance-cjirporal, bier 'reduction to the ranks, her confinement to barracks, her shrapnel wound in the mouth and head, and the disevery of her sex at Netley 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 woman similarly, named was. charged with drunkenness at Hastings in 1927. She said that she had been three times wounded while -serving as a cook in the Australian Forces, but the allegation was not investigated. Although Miss Drewett’s memoir gave her number as ISOSO2, the militarv authorities at the Base Records Office, Melbourne, state that there was no such number in the Australian Forces.