Page:Women Wanted.djvu/158

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WOMEN WANTED

ber, Emilienne, ascending to the demolished garret, where she lay flat on her stomach on the rafters, watched a battle in which the strangest beings she ever saw took part, fantastic creatures of a grey colour who were throwing themselves on the German trenches. As they advanced, she noticed that they wore "little petticoats," and she hurried to tell her mother that these must be the English suffragettes of whom she had heard, coming to the rescue of Loos. What they actually were was the Scottish troops in kilts, the famous "Black Watch," who a few days later had driven the Germans from Loos. As they came into the village, Emilienne, braving a cyclone of shells, and rallying her French neighbours, ran to meet them, waving the French flag and singing the "Marseillaise." Thus, it is said, by her fearless courage, was averted a retreat that might have meant disaster along the whole front.

But the fighting was not yet over. During the next few days, Emilienne, with the Red Cross doctor's assistance, turned her house into a first-aid station. Some seven of the stalwart Scotsmen in the "little petticoats," she herself dragged in to safe shelter when they had been wounded. Two Germans taking aim at French soldiers she killed with a revolver she had just snatched from the belt of a dead man. When the enemy had been finally repulsed, Emilienne Moreau was summoned by the Government to be given the Croix de Guerre.

A little later, her pictured face was placarded all over Paris by the French newspapers. They wanted