Woman as Soldier

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 103, 2 May 1941, Page 8

Woman as Soldier

(0.C.) LONDON, March 27. With the Emperor Haile Selassie’s expeditionary force inarching into Abj'ssinia is one woman. She is Miss Banichyzgu Kidani, a 23-year-old nurse, who was once condemned to death by the Italians. She disguised herself as a boy to join the expedition. “I appealed to the Emperor to allow me to accompany his troops as a hospital nurse,” she said, “but he refused on the ground that the journey would be too severe for a woman. So I cut off my hair, disguised myself as a soldier and marched, until one day the Emperor recognised me, and, since it was too late to send me back, allowed me to remain.” Miss Kidani’s father, a colonel in the Emperor's army, was hanged by * the Italians in the market-place at Addis Ababa, 10 months ago. Captured in the Abyssinian war, Miss Kidani was imprisoned in Addis Ababa by the Italians, who ordered her execution. With the aid of an American missionary, she got some medicine which made her so violently ill that the Italian authorities, believing her to be suffering from an infectious and fatal disease, put her in the Abyssinian leper colony. A Swedish doctor helped her to escape, and after many adventures she reached a Sudanese outpost. In 1939 she returned to Abyssinia to join the rebels. Returning to the Sudan, she worked as a nurse until the Emperor’s arrival at Khartoum from England.