WOMEN OF BRITAIN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 43, 20 February 1941, Page 8

WOMEN OF BRITAIN

APPRECIATION OF BRAVERY Warm praise is given to the women of Britain in an editorial in the New York Times which expresses appreciation of their bravery, saying:—“When the record of this war is written—the war in which there is no ‘front line’ and women and children in the cities share in equal degree the perils of the combatant forces —there should be a special chapter for the women of Great Britain and the part they are playing in a heroic resistance which compels the homage of the world. “There are the girl wardens in steel helmets and brown dungarees who make the rounds of the London shelters at night; the shop girls and the typists who go to work through the morning air raids as a matter of course; the social workers ready to feed and clothe the homeless at any hour in the 24; housands of these, sharing a common heroism anonymously, and others whose identities chance has revealed.

“There is 19-year-old Sonia Shaw, the first woman to win the George Medal, who stayed in a wrecked shelter in which many of the women and children were injured, giving what help she could until long after other aid arrived. After that she walked through a bombed street and into a collapsing house to rescue an old lady. “There is Alice Pearson, of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. When a plane made a forced landing outside her quarters and burst into flames she helped to drag out the wounded pilot. And Mrs. Horton, the elderly Lancashire woman who, trapped for six hours with a hundred other people in an East London shelter, calmed frightened wbmen and put children back to sleep. And the girl operator who through a night raid, when the fire station was hit and several men killed, stuck to her teleprinter to keep the service going.

“The number of these women heroines is legion, though few are known by name. Their deeds are a shining glory alongside the bright record of the men whose courage and steadfastness they emulate.”