A WOMAN SOLDIER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20105, 26 March 1928, Page 5

A WOMAN SOLDIER

CUBAN COLONEL A FIGHTER FOR LIBERTY. Cuba is mourning the death of its only woman colonel, Juana Arias Verdecia, who attained that rank in the revolutionary forces during the sanguinary struggle against Spain between 1868 and 1878, passed away recently at Bayamo, states the New York Tinies. She had reached, it is said, the ago of 116 years, and notwithstanding minor infirmities, made her own living by raising fruit and vegetables. Many tales are told of Colonel Juana’s valour, of how she fought with the ferocity of a tigress and afterwards extended compassion to her wounded enemies. At tho outbreak of the revolution the colonel’s husband took the field, leaving his wife to superintend the farm. But Juana would have none of it—strapping on a machete she rode to the insurgents’ camp and joined her husband, fighting by his side until he was made a brigadier. Then, obtaining an independent command, she became a terror to the Spaniards. ‘“Men will follow* where a woman leads,” she is reported to have said. In the historic march of tho Cubans from Orient to Santa Clara Province, a distance of several hundred miles, Colonel Juana fought in practically every engagement, never hesitating to expose herself to the enemy’s bullets.