WOMAN IN BATTLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11215, 22 October 1914, Page 3

WOMAN IN BATTLE.

AMERICAN MOTHER'S TERRIBLE STORY. ON THE EAST PRUSSIAN FRONTIER. (" Sau Francisco Chronicle.") NEW YORK, September 12. An American woman who spent the night behind the trenches with her three children during the battle on the Russian-German frontier and who, with her own hands, buried two *of her children who died from exposure, returned to-night .on the Cunard liner Campania with her one remaining child. Her husband, Curtis Gibbs, who is at their home in Berkeley, Cal., does not yet know of his wife's terrible experience.

"I was in AVirballen, m Russia, near the German frontier, visiting my bro-ther-in-law, when the war broke out," said Mrs Gibbs. "My three children were with me, Curtis, jun, aged seven; Orleana Anna, aged four, and Martha, aged three. Little Martha is the only one who came through the terrible experience alive, and she is here with me.

"On the second day of August .there was a battle just outside Wirballen, between the Germans and Russians. We could hear tho roar and see the smoke. Sounds kept coming nearer and people began to flee from the town. Finally the firing got so close that I decided to take my three children and flee..

"I started on foot with no luggage. I was so frightened that I do not know which way I went, but I walked right into the' centre of the- battle, right' between the firing. " Several Russian soldiers jumped out of the trenches and dragged my children and myself down in the trenches with them. Then there was nothing to do but to stay there. There was a hail,of shot falling all around us. We sat cramped up in the trenches all night, with the soldiers firing on each side of us. "My little boy had been ill. He had fever. A night in the trench was more than he could stand. He died at dawn on August 3." Mrs Gibbs then' decided that to save the lives of her two little girls she must get them out of the damp trenches. They had had nothing to eat. With the two girls clinging to her skirts, she carried her dead boy in her arms and made her way back into town during a lull in the firing. The town was deserted.

' I went to my brother-in-law's home and found no one about," Mrs Gibbs continued. "I wanted my boy to have a decent burial, so I carried him to the undertakers. There, as everywhere else, no one was about, but the shop was open. I went in and picked out a little coffin. Then I laid tho boy in it." Mrs Gibbs managed to drag the coffin'to her brother-in-law's house. She had neither time nor strength left to dig a grave, but she scooped out a little hole in the yard, set the coffin in it and heaped some dirt over it. Then she took the two girls and started again on foot to flee from the battle.

She walked toward the west, she said, and she and the children slept under the stars, without food. She arrived at Vilna, Russia, on August 7, and there her four-year-old daughter, Orleana, died from exposure. "The people were kind to me," she said. "Two men helped me bury the child in a little cemetery in Vilna. I went away and left her there."

From Vilna Mrs Gibbs went to Landwarawo and then to Orborg, in Finland. From Orborg she was helped to Norway, and ultimately a passage was provided for - her on a steamer that took her to England. The Russian, authorities, in response to requests from her relatives in the United States, had managed to locate her at Landwarawo and thereafter everything possible was done to help her.