IRISH GIRL'S STORY

Levin Daily Chronicle, 23 November 1918, Page 4

IRISH GIRL'S STORY

LITE IN ST. MTHXEL. POUR YEARS WITHOUT NEWS. I have talked with an Irish girl who was in the town of St. Mihiai all through the German occupation. It was while I was walking through one of the main streets, stopping to chat with civilians who hastened to shake hands, that a voice with an Irish broguo greeted mo and a colleague with a question: "Are you Americans?" We answered that we were the first Englshmen to enter tho town. Then this young Irish girl, Mass Aline : Henry, of Toberdovy House, Dunlger, County Louth, wearing a neat Union Jack below, exclaimed exultantly: "How wonderful! Why I'm Irish!'' We congratulated her on her liberation from the' Huns, offered to inform her parents, and gave her the first English newspaper she had seen for four years. At a relative's house she told the story of her life in St- Mihiel. Speaking English with occasional breaks of French, which she explained was due to the fact that the only English she had spoken for four yearfl was with a little French boy whom she had taught, she said: "I came over to France in June, 1914, to live with my uncle, a major in the French army, to learn French. When the war broke out he joined his regiment and a month later the Germans entered the town. -

"We got very little to eat and -were forced to find shelter in a cave whenever shelling began- Those who consented to work for the Germans in the fields or in washing clothes or other employment wore paid in paper money, the conversion of which into hard cash was 'guaranteed' two years after the war. Those who went to the fields were under, military escort." I bought Beveral of these notes from civilians, who seemed greatly pleased to see real French money once again.

"I was imprisoned in the Maire," the girl continued, "for three weeke on suspicion of being a spy. Our greatest troubles were in getting food, clothes, iund news from the outside world. Every day we had to go out and buy our food from the supplies that the American Relief Commission sent through Belgium, but it was not a great deal, and bread was often unobtainable. The Germans were in, a similar plight. Clothes, too, came through the relief committee, but the majority of us had to dress as best we could. The Germans, soon after they arrived, had emptied the shops. A friend of mine made a blouse from some cloth that had boen her grandmother's. "To get news from our relatives we had to apply to the Eed Cross. I got news from my father on several occasions, but although I often ■wrote to him I doubt whether he got my messages, for he always asked for news. We were supplied with the Gazette des Ardennes, the newspaper printed in French by the Germans for the occupied regions, and naturally filled with nothing but what the Germans wished us to believe."

. "I told her the war news, but it was apparently beyond her comprehension, and the mention of places like Soissons and commanders like Foch was Greek to her, so long had she been in ignorance of anything truthful about the war.''