WOMAN WARRIOR ROMANCE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10957, 23 December 1911, Page 3 (Supplement)

WOMAN WARRIOR ROMANCE.

DEATH OF A MODERN. JO AN OF ARC.

In the little white ward of the little white iiospital in the little white town of St. Nicholas du Port a white-haired old woman of ninety-two has just died. .Her name was Antoinette Lix, and she was a lieutenant of the Francs-Tireurs —ihe. famous sharpr.'jooL' is of I'rani'C. who did such damage to the Piv.ssian and Bavarian troops during ihe war cf IS7O, and very nearly turne'l ihe scale mi more than one occasion. Antoinette was one of live brothers There is no need to smile. That is the way in which she always used to tell her story when she was asked for it in the little wiiite room in the hospital of St. Nicholas du Poil. She was born at Colmar, in Alsace, her mother died just as she saw the light, and.the first thing that she remembered was the words of her father and her uncle, soldiers both, as they stood looking at her: "Pity that the child is not a boy." She was brought up as one. With her four brothers Antoinette learned to play the same games, to dress, to think, to work, and to do everything as though she were a boy. Her' brothers never made the slightest difference between their treatment of each other and of her, and as she grew a little older her father made a point of taking her about with him just as lie took her brothers, of talking to her just as he talked to them, even of taking her with him to the cafe in the evening, where. Antoinette smoked her cigar and drank her beer as other "boys" of seventeen smoke their cigars and drank their beer in Alsace.

And she became a splendid horsewoman, an expert with the foils and with the rapier, an unerring shot, and learned to speak three languages besides French, which was the language, then, of Alsace. Her knowledge of languages—she had learned and become proficient in English, German, and Polish—got her, in 1862, the berth of "tutor" in a Polish family. She was to teach three girls there to become '•little men" like herself. But early next year, in 1863, the insurrection broke "out, and Antoinette Lis dressed herself in a man's clothes again, and rushed to fight for Poland. She fought, and fought so well that she was made lieutenant of the lancers, but the day after she Jiad been given the accolade by her commanding officer, a lancer of the enemy ran her through the shoulder, and she spent the rest of the short campaign in hospital, a prisoner. She managed to escape and wont to live at Guebwiller. The next heard of her was in a small town in the north of France, where, there was cholera. Antoinette Lix fought the epidemic with the" same dash, the same magnificent self-abne-gation that she had fought the Russians, and when the fight was over she was mentioned in despatches. The doctors signed a letter to the French Home Office, in which they recommended Antoinette Lix for a re, ward, "which that brave woman would certainly he too proud to ask for hersslf?" and Antoinette Lix was given the. position of postmistress in the own of Lamarche, a small own in the Vosges. She was there just ten months. Then the war with Germany burst like a bombshell, and Antoinette Lix wrote to the Minister of Commerce: "Let me go, Monsieur le Ministre," she wrote, "let me go for six weeks. I hope that these six weeks will hs, enough for me to pay my debt to France or die for her." Antoinette Lix got six weeks' leave, and enlisted in' a company of Francs-Tireurs — sharpshooters —at Lamarche. "Tony" Lix soon became the idol of her company. The bearded veterans, from rough old Captain Lapicque downwards, loved the fearless youngster who was always first when there was danger going, and whose beardless face_ and squeaky voice "were so- much like a. woman's." It was in a fight with German outposts at Raon-L'Etape that Antoinette Lix wx>n the gold stripe, and became a lieutenant in the French Army after winning officer's rank in the army of Poland.

It was a nasty little skirmish( in which bullets flew like a scattered swarm of wasps. It came after five nights of hardship, when rations had been scanty and a bnnch of bracken in the woods the only bed obtainable. '.'Tony" Lix, .as the men called her, had been/the life and soul of. the company, "and when the Francs-Tireurs. and German outposts • found each other,- it was she who proposed a race with a box of cigars as a prize, and attacked the. Germans with a-shout of laughter. Captain Lapicquewas-wounded' in the leg that morning. "Tony" Lix fought like a demon. Every now and then she would stop fighting to give first aid to the wounded and get the slightly wounded out of danger. Then she ran back and fought again. But the battle of Bourgonco. had spelled defeat, and for some weeks Lieutenant "Tony" and her little company, worn out and without one unwounded man among them, were marched and counter-marched, and at last regained Lamarche. Lieutenant "Tony" had been wounded by a bit of shell, but she refused to go to hospital. Thev gave her a gold medal. Sh? .sold it for the fund which was raised to pay the indemnity to Germany. A friend bought the medal in and retnrn-

Ed it to Antoinette Lix. She sold it a second time.

,ln 1875 her wounds made it impossible for her to do her work as postmistress and friends obtained for her a Government tobacco shop, which assured her an income. In 1898 Antoinette Lix fell ill again. She s«oh became too ill to work at all, and she was taken to the little hospital of St. Nicholas du Port. Nobody knew her there, and the good sisters .who looked after her believed that the poor woman was wandering in her mind when she told stories of Lieutenant "Tony." But one of the nuns, Sister Delphine, is an Alsatian, and Sister Delphine understood. . She listened to Antoinette Lix's stories of war and martial prowess., She understood her longing to wear uniform again, and every Sunday Sister Delphine locked the door of "the little white ward in the little white hospital in the little white town of St. Nicholas du Port, and the white-haired patient was dressed by the hands of the sisters of mercy in the uniform of Lieutenant "Tony" Lix, of the Francs-Tireurs. .' And when Antoinette Lix died Sister Delphine stood by her bedside holding her sword hilt so that the withered hand might have the feel of it once more before consciousness left the woman who had fought so well for i France.