WAR MISCELLANY

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 24

WAR MISCELLANY

LOYALTY OF KELANTAN. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, August 7. "ENOUGH TO MAKE THE STONES WEEP." A citizen of Liege, who has succeeded in escaping from Belgium, draws a terrible picture of the sufferings of the repatriated deportees and of the brutality with which the unfortunate people are still treated by tho Germans. This escaped Belgian has been engaged sinch March at an .infirmary outside Liege station, and has witnessed tho arrival of train train of repatriated deportees. Only a small proportion of the men have come back at all, and these are so broken and exhausted as to bo useless for work. Describing what ho had seen, ho said : "Many of the men in these deportees' trams had to be detrained at Liego owing to their desperate condition. It was only with great difficulty that some doctors and voluntary workers obtained permission from the Germans to tend the starving, sick, and dying. Never shall I forget the terrible scenes I have witnessed. The trains contained sometimes 500 to 900 men, who had been for three days practically without food. A great many of them had their feet and legs frostbitten or frozen off, and had to be carried 'on stretchers. They had been obliged to walk for hours in their stockinged feet in the snow. Often gangrene had set in, and the men died within a few days. He had an average of two deaths every day in our small infirmary. Some of them were so famished that they could not take any food, and had to be fed with* a spoon; others ate ravenously anything that they could snatch from your hand. Ninety "per cent, are stricken with tuberculosis, and will never recover. Such is theC result of a few months spent in the German prison camps and kommandos. " The first time we saw them alight from tho train we could not believe that, these ragged ghoste, with haggard faces and fee'fc wrapped In muddy sacklock, could be the same men who had passed through Liege singing patriotic songs on their way to Germany. According to the reports, many have died over there; many also died on the way home, every train bringing a load or three or four dead as well as the dying.Many more have died at home later after horrible sufferings from the incurable diseases which they have contracted. But these physical tortures are nothing beside the moral trials to which they have been subjected. Some of the men have gone quite mad, and do not realise that they have come back. One of the men I at' tended, in his delirium, repented unceasingly the same cry while making a move« ment as if pushing something away. ' I will not sign j I will not sign !' He did not, and he died for it in my arms. As an old woman said to me who was waiting for her eon to be returned: 'ls it not enough to make the stones weep?' " A WAR HEROINE. Mr Geoffrey Young, officer of the British Ambulance Unit for Italy, and formerly in command of the French unit at Ypres, writes from Gorizia:— "Sister Julienne, one of the senior sister* of the Civil Hospital at Ypres. has just been reported killed by a shell. This saintly and devoted woman, well on in years, was one of the few heroi? sisters who remained in Ypre3 during the first terrible bombardment, when the town was abandoned. She icinained to c.ire for a number of wounded Germans, nursing ihem until they were finally removed. A few days later she was one of those who returned when the Friends' Ambulance Unit opened in the cellars .a ward for the w r ounded children and civilian"*. She remained through all the subsequent hombarnment; one of tho boldest figures of the epidemic, one of the most courageous to issus under shell fire to fetch in the wounded and the sick. -

','When the town was finally abandoned, she remained with one other sister, on her own initiative at an aid-post in the cellars, to nurse the wounded British soldiers.- Only under compulsion did she at last retire to Poperinghe, where she remained to tna end, nnrflmg civilians and sojdiers alik<*, under repeated bombardments, until her death. She was the custodian of the treasures of her hospital, and braved death constantly to visit or remove them. A gentle, sensitive, nerv.ms lady, she was beloved by the wounded children for her sunny gentleness, and by those who worked with her for her refinement and humour. Nothing but a profound sense of duty and love could have supported her through peril and shock, sight and round, such as proved too'much for vigorous men. There may be many heroines in the war more conspicuous, but none whose courage was more tested, or whose motives and character were more beautiful." EIGHT MORE NEW AEROPLANES.

Already 100 war aeroplanes have been presented to the Royal Flying Corps through the instrumentality of the Overseas Club and its members and friends in all parts of tho world. To mark the com-, pletion of the third year of the great war, a cheque for £13,500_ has been handed to • Lieutenant-general Sir David Henderson, Director-general of Military Aeronautics. This represents eight additional machines—namely, No. 101, Mr Walter £r reGn acre, of Durban; No. 102, Shanghai Race Club No. 4 (per Mr H. H.' Read); No. 103, Hongkong No. 7. given bv Mr A. R. Lowe (per Mr J. J. Bryan); No. 104, Hongkong No. 8 (per Mr J. J. Bryan); No. 105, The Henrietta, given by Mjje Stromberg, New York; No. 106, Chicago, from several Chicago citizens; No. 107, Christchurch Branch of the Overseas Club; and No. 103, the Chiefs of Ashanti No. 3. On Empire Day the' club presented two aeroplanes to the Ro.val Flying Corps, and the money for_ those - eight machines has been received during l the • past eight weeks, so that practically the Overseas Club and its members are adding , one machine every week to the equipment of the Royal Flying Corps, and have now mado a good start towards their second hundred machines.