In a hidden corner five Germans kept fighting our troops unseen until this girl discovered their position.
She got hold of some hand-grenades and threw them in among them, killing three of them. The two survivors attacked her with bayonets, but she had armed herself with the revolver belonging to a dead British officer, and as they came at her she turned it on them with quick and steady aim and shot them both.
Then she went to work, regardless of the danger of rifle fire and shrapnel, tending the wounded, rendering first-aid, bringing water and blankets to them, thereby saving their lives and easing the pain of a number of British soldiers.
Our officers found her doing these things. She was personally thanked and congratulated by the British general for her valuable assistance to the medical staff, and for her courage and gallant help against the enemy, and she was later on awarded the French Military Cross “for valour on the field of battle.” Later we heard that Emilienne Moreau was a French Girl Scout, and what this gallant French girl did, her sister Girl Scouts in Britain would, I hope, also do in similar circumstances.
But it could only be done when a girl has trained herself as the Scouts do to be plucky, to be handy, to keep cool, to know what is the right thing to do—and to do it at no matter what risk to herself.
Frontierswomen
I have met many fine frontierswomen in my time. In Matabeleland, when the natives rose against us, Mrs. Selous, the wife of the great elephant hunter, was alone in her home, thirty miles away from the nearest town. Some natives living close by came and asked her for the loan of as many axes as she could spare, as they wanted to chop firewood. Shortly afterwards her husband, who had been away shooting, came galloping in, and told her to saddle and mount her horse at once and to get away as the natives were “up” and murdering the white inhabitants.
A Frontier-woman’s Ride for Life.