LOST ON THE MOORS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22332, 1 February 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

LOST ON THE MOORS

ORDIEAL OF THREE GIRLS —— ALFi/E AFTER FIVE DAYS STORY TOLD TO RESCUERS After five days of exposure in bitterly cold weather on the bleak moors of Yorkshire, recently, three girl ramblers who dicl not return from a walk were found ulive. Their survival was a miracle of endurance. It waa a miracle of prayer, too. When afc last one of the girls co uld speak these were the words she whispered: "Every night we knelt down iiu the grass and offeree! a prayer to Saint Anthony." (Patron Saint of the Lout.) On the morning of the day they were found not one of the moorland dwellers believed that the girls could possibly have survived the terrible weather of the previous five days. Hour alter hour, the gale—sweeping an icy rain before it—had . screamed across the moors. Yet it was in one of the most exposed parts of the countryside, eight miles from the road, that the girls were found alive by one of the little band? of searchers who were looking only for their bodies. The girls were Elsie Rowlands, agod 21, of Manchester; Edna Con:nolly, aged 21, of !Broughton; arid Pauline Preston, aged 20, of Broughton. When found they were lying exhausted. Their feet were swollen twice their normal Bias; they were nearly starving. Throughout the loitig five days they haicl walked, growing weaker and weaker, all sen Be of direction gone; by night they hnd lain do'ivn nearly frozen. [Policeman's Whistle Heard Eighli searchers, four of them policemen, had gone out on a forlorn hope. The organised hunt had been abandoned. The three gills had been given up as dead. By mid-day the searchers had reached the spot on the moors where the girls were last seen alive. They walked on for a mile and a half. Then -[hey found a walking-stick stack in the mud. Then, a few yards away, a leather shoelining; then the belt of a mackintosh. The searchers spread oat. They expected to find three dead girls. A policeman blew his whistle—a thin pipe it sounded over the desolate moor. One ol: his companions smiled despairingly. What answer could iihere be? The policeman whistled again . From the distance came a faim: cry. Mr. William Woodhall, a Manchester insurance official, ran forward with the others, JTn a mud crevasse he found them. Elsie and Pauline were cheerful. Edna ithowed signs of her ordeal.

Soaked by the Rain Mud centered their clothes and faces. They irere soaked by the misit and rain. Sandwiches, their only food, had been finished. For three days they had not eaten. The rescuers gave the girls a change of stockings, and brandy to sip and biscuits to eat. Elsie and Pauline were ablie to walk down to the Bill of Jacks Inn two and a half miles over the roughest ground. Four of the searchers accompanied them. Other rescuers rigged up a stretcher with two walking sticks and a mackintosh, and carried Edna to the inn. From the inn the girls were taken by motor-car to Suddleworth Police Statjoji. There Elsie told the story;-*? "Win left the waterman's hu.t cri Sunday, intending to walk over the moors to the Laddow rocks and to Gr<?enfield. We had not gone veigr far wlien a thick mist settled on th® moors, and we stumbled off the path. We lost all sense of direction when it became dark. It was bitterlly cold. We . huddkd together for warmth, but it was impossible to sleep. Fall Into A Bog; "Orii Monday we followed the bed of a strei&m, but it only seemed to lead us * back in a circle. We climbed a steep mud cliff, and Edna fell, into a bog up to heir waist. Pauline and I struggled for more than an hour to free her. All our clothes were saturated. We lost our shoes in the mud. We had only one orange for food, and we ate this in ;he evening. We have had nothing more to eat until now"Edna, in spite of her condition, cracked jokes and made fun of our plight. She was splendid. Our feet were swollen and aching with the cold, and we tried to keep them warm by massaging each other. We slept. huddled together under a bank. On Tuesday we saw the aeroplane searching; fcr us, but we had not the strength to wave long enough to be seen. It passusd over our heads, and we really thought that was the end. 1. "The only drink we had was muddy water from a stream to which we could « only crawl. We drank out of a hat. Every night we prayed to St. Anthony of Padua. He is known as the helper of lost people. We hardly snoke all day, but we kept lip our prayers each night. Edna was now very weak, and to-day we tried to walk again, but it was hopeless. We just lay ancl prayed in the grass."