GIRL'S SPLENDID DARING.
FRENCH HEROINE OF FOUR GREAT EXPLOITS. A matinee was organised recently at the Sorbonne, in honor of French womanhood, when the heroism was celebrated of a girl of 21, Marcelle Semmer, who has already been decorated with the Croix do Guerre and the Legion of Honour.
During the great retreat, after the French had crossed the Sommc and iti canal, pursued by the enemy, Mile. Marcelle Semmer had the presence of mind to open the sluice gates in order to prevent the Germans from crossing the canal. This act of heroism was carried out, though the Germans deliberately fired on her. As a result, the enemy army corps was held up until the following morning. In the village she- picked up and hid underground sixteen exhausted French soldiers, whom she subsequently helped to escape in civilian clothes.
Later she was caught by the enemy in the act of feeding a French soldier hidden in a thicket, and was condemned to death. She was on the point of being executed when the French artillery, dispersed the Germans.
She was again taken prisoner while serving as a guide to a patrol, but, after being shut up in a church, she escaped in the night through a shell-hole, and regained the French lines—Wireless Press. M. Klotz, the deputy and chairman of the Budget 'Commission, who paid a warm tribute to Mile. Semmer, referred to the action of the British general who later in the year occupied Eclusier. To show respect to the youthful heroine, he ordered his men to salute her when she passed and never address her unless they were first spoken to.—Renter.
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Taranaki Daily News, 26 December 1917, Page 2
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274GIRL'S SPLENDID DARING. Taranaki Daily News, 26 December 1917, Page 2
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