WOMAN AS A SOLDIER

Hokitika Guardian, 8 July 1929, Page 8

WOMAN AS A SOLDIER

THRICE “OVER THE TOP.” 1 That she served in the war as a “doughboy” t in bbe American Army went to France and took part in three big battles without her sex ever being discovered, is the amazing claim of an Englishwoman, who was recently in England, on a visit from New York. She is Mrs Muriel Cavendish, a former Southampton girl, who went to America four years before the war. Her husband, whom she married in 1920, died last year ,and she was lately in Southampton to see her mother. , Doubt has been cast upon Mrs Cavendish’s remarkable story, and she is engaged in writing a hook in an endeavour to prove its truth. “People frankly don’t believe me when I say I served with the American forces as a man,” Mrs Cavendish said to an interviewer. “But it is perfectly true.’ Anxious to do something more than ordinary war work, said Mrs Cavendish she decided to try to enlist in one of the infantry units as a private soldier. “By a. stroke of luck,” she remarked “I came across a Californian who had been in the army some weeks and who wanted to got home because his mother was on the point of deatli. Without disclosing my sox, of course, I suggested to him that he should let me change places with him, and lie agreed He had joined under an assumed name. “I therefore took his papers, his uniform, and his identity. As he had just been transferred to another unit and was on the way to join it when I met him there was no fear of my being recognised by any of his former comrades We then shook hands, and I never saw him again. By this means I became a fully-fledged private in the array. With’ in a few months I was on draft for France ,nnd my secret was as well ‘•opt as ever.” Mrs Cavendish states that she served on the Western Front for eight months during which time she went “over the top” on three occasions. When tho Armistice was signed she deserted in a French town, and confessed her story to a French girl with whom she made friends. The girl gave her the clothes to enable ber to resume ber identity as a woman, and she reached homo by obtaining a position as a stewardess on an 1 - Atlantic liner.