WOMEN IN FIRING LINE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 925, 27 January 1917, Page 7

WOMEN IN FIRING LINE.

TRUE TALES OF HEROISM. A graphic story of the work of two brave women in the firing line is told in "The Cellar House of Pervyse" from the journals and letters of Baroness T'Serclaes aud Mairi Chishohn. " ... A crumbling house with every pane of glass shattered to splinters and the walls gaping. The light was always dim, for the cellar was only lit by gratings in the pavement above. It was perhaps 10 feet by about 12 feet." Envisage that scene. Set it in the midst of the little war-wracked corner of Belgium whereon the Hun foot has not trodden. Imagine bombardment, bitter weather, scarcity of food, absence of usable water —and death in every horrible shape day and night. That was the little Cellar House of Pervyse. That was the little advance post of humanity which two women held valiantly against all assaults of the enemy, and of officialdom, throughout the bitterest days of 1914 and 1915. It is a wonderful story that has been pieced together from the diaries and letters of those two women, the Baroness T'Serclaes and Miss Mairi Chishohn, known throughout as Gipsy and Mairi, for they achieved miracles of strength and endurance. Terrible Night Drive. There is, for example, Gipsy's night drive with a heavy ambulance full of men:— The roads were abominable; never had she known them so bad. Sometimes the steering wheel was jerked right out of her hands, which, for all their skill, had not the strength to hold up the weight so suddenly thrown on the wrists. The skids were almost continuous, and jerked the living freight from side to side. At any moment, the whole ambulance might topple right over. She had been driving off and on since seven that morning, and was already tired. "All at once a shell burst, as it seemed, right overhead, and in the blinding light she saw ••something straight across the track, something big and black, which made her shut down the brakes and pull up. The body of a great cart-horse was lying across the way. It was far beyond her strength to move, so. groping in the mud. she measured the space left in which to pass, and found she could do it with six iuches to spare." She did it. A Labour of Love. The object of the Cellar House was primarily to help wounded men to recover from shock, to be fed and warmed, before they started off in the ambulances to face such a ride as that. Much more was done, however, by these two women, one of whom was only a girl of IS. They supplied soup and hot chocolate to the men in the trenches near them, and to sentries during the bitter nights:—

"Every man who came to ask for the ladies' assistance had to bring a letter from his commanding officer warranting that he was in need of it. Such varying needs, too! One had caught his hand on a nail and the wound wns festering; another was in agony with swollen, inflamed feet; a third was quite done up, nothing to show ex,cept that he was incapable of the smallest exertion. Him they fed and put into what they called the 'blesse bed' in the corner, because it was devoted to the soldiers. They piled up hot-water bottles round him and let him sleep the clock round, after which he rose a new man."

There were horrors, *oo, all too many of them, and some of them almost too horrible for the telling. In one letter the baroness says: — "I saw at once the poor brave little soldier was past my aid. I said to them, 'II est mort.' They turned to me with an incredulous look as if I had spoken from inexperience, but I have seen so many—the number runs into thousands—that I could make no mistake."