WOMAN SOLDIER

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3008, 20 February 1917, Page 3

WOMAN SOLDIER

. A REMARKABLE CAREER.

Tho number of women who have fought in the British Army may never bo knowii, because in many instances their secret died with them, but one or two notable cases are quoted by Mr. Reginald F. H,ealy in the United Service Magazine Tho muster rolls of the Scots Greys for many years, says the the namo of Trooper Christopher Welch, and it was not until a fragment from a French shell revealed the fact that the good-looking dragoon was really a woman that the truth becamp known. Christian Kavanagh, for that was our heroine's maiden's name, spent the early years of her life on her father's farm just outside Dublin, and

eventually married a Richard Welch, who enlisted, Recording to him against his will, but more probably because he got drunk ,in Orkney's Regiment—now known ae the Royal Scots. In the hope of finding him sho cropped her hair like, a man, and in man's attire enlisted "in a foot regiment then serving in Hol-lands-she was at.! ,, '? time about six-and-twenty. Her first experience of being under fire wa?_at the basils' Q f Landen, where she was wounded by a musket ball above the ankle. Some time afterwards, while out with a foraging party, she was taken prisoner, but was_Eoon exchanged, and rought a duel with a sergeant of some other corps. The canse of the quarrel, appears to have been a Duteh eirl, and the gallant sergeant was badly wounded. Whether this affair w.as the reason for lea vino: the infantry battalion in which she served up "to this is not clear, but, at any rate, she joined Lord John Hav's Dragoons, now the Royal Scot Greys, as a trooper, end was with that corps at Namur. After'the campaign she took her'discharge and paid a visit to her native country. Seven years' campaigning had not cooled her ardour for a military life or her desire to find her husband, and she re-enlisted in the Greys in 1701.

The Greys fought on foot at Donnauwerth, and in tjke rush on the enemy's trenches Christian got a musket ball jn tho thijrh, but she avoided the regimental doctor, and t\<! bullet remained there. Soon after the Battle, while guarding some nrisoners, she met her husband, and a fr.i<inie,nt of a shell at the battle of Eamillios fractured her skull, her sex being discovered after the engagement. She then attached herself to her husband's regiment, and continued to follow tfhe troops as a sutler. Welch was killed at the siege of Mons, and the widow soon afterwards married Hugh Jones, a grenadier in the same corns, who fell at St. Venant. After the army quitted tho Low Countries she.returned to Dublin and married for ,the third time. Her choice on this occasion, was a sergeant of the 23rd Fusiliers named Davies; Her husband being ordered to London, Christian accompanied him, and for some time kept a public-house in 'After another visit to Dublin she lived for_ three yearsjjt C.h«t,er, and the reY™ lnm S years of ller »fe was spent in' Ohelsea, where sho and her hushmd were out-pensioners of the hospital. Her last wish was to be lnid to'rest among her one-time commdes in the gni.v eyar d attached to Chelsea' Hoswish which was gratified.