HIDDEN IN WARDROBE

Otago Witness, Issue 3806, 22 February 1927, Page 29

HIDDEN IN WARDROBE

AMAZING STQRY REVEALED. LONDON, February 14. An amazing- story, which has hitherto not been released, is told in long despatches from Bertry, an unmapped village north of St. Quentin, where Trooper Patrick Fowler, of the 11th Hussars, was listed as missing. He remained hidden in a compartment of a wardrobe, sft by 30in by 18iu, from January 15, 1915, till October 10, 1918, while the village was occupied by the Germans. The heroine of this desperate adventure, who was daily and hourly in danger of death for the part she played, is Mad.ime Belmont Gobert, a widow. This noble self-sacrifice on behalf of a British soldier might never have been recorded lad madame not recently fallen on evil times. Fowler’s horse was shot beneath him in the Battle of Le Chateau. He was cut off from his regiment, ajid he hid in the woods until he was discovered by Madame Gobert’s son-in-law. The soldier was brought to Madame Gobert’s house virtually under the itosco of the German patrols. He was olaced in the wardrobe, where, with the exception of a month, he .remained for nearly four years. Never a day passed without Germans visiting the house, and for a couple of years 20 were billeted there. They used to sit within a yard of the wardrobe, laughing, eating, and often going to the adjoining compartment to obtain food. During this terrible time Corporal Herbert Hull, of the same regiment, was found secreted in another house and shot. Ike Germans commenced a search for others, and upon this Madame Gobert dressed Fowler in woman’s clothes, and took 1/m at night to "an empty barn, where he lived for a month underground, and was often for days without food owing to the vigilance of the Germans. How Madame Gobert fed and ministered to Fowler’s wants is told in detail by the Daily Telegraph’s special correspondent, who says: “Thousands of British imaginations and hearts must be stirred by this poignant drama. Such a heroine cannot be allowed to remain in straitened circumstances. The -British War Office has already paid her 2044 francs, representing the extra messing allowance to which she is entitled under the regulations, having kept a British soldier for four years. Madame Gobert has been decorated with the 0.8. E. by King George for, as the official record says, ‘helping a British soldier.’ ”