Stories of gallantry are being told in Great Britain, and often they are stories of the gallantry of women—every-day women who in ordinary times never would have considered themselves capable of gallantry at all, observes the "Christian Science Monitor" There is the music teacher, Mary Cornish, who set out for Canada in the City of Benares with a group of evacuee children. When the ship was tor-pedeed 600 miles from land, she performed an act of heroism that hardly could be surpassed.
the City of Mary Benares sank, h found herself w and 30-odd British and Lascar sailors adrift in n open boat on a rough Atlantic Ocean The sailors rigged a canvas covering and under this Mary Cornish sheltered the children. covering them with two blankets, and for eight d: crouched beside them, showing them ho} io exercise cramped limbs, massage ing their legs to keep them from frostbite, telling them stories.
At the cui of eight days ately to the care thai schoolgirl-who was on women be decorated with the George Medal y the Sonia Straw sits, during working hou! at a deck in the office of a firm of solicitor in South London. Out of work hours she is an A. R. P. Warden, with steel helmet and official brassard. South London has been heavily raided, and Sonia Straw has done her share of rescue work. One night, with hostile aeroplanes roaring overhead and the debris of ruined homes lying across the streets of her district, she found injured persons waiting for attention. Quickly as she could, and without the slightest regard for the danger to herself, Sonia Straw dressed the wounds, comforting everyone by her cool courage. It never occurred to her that her action was heroic. "It wasn't pleasant," she admitted afterwards, "but somebody had to do the job."
Elizabeth Lyle is another heroine. An ARP. Warden of Edinburgh, she discovered one night that a baby had been trapped beneath the debris of a ruined tenement. Elizabeth Lyle was well aware of the danger involved' in entering a bombed building but she thought the baby would be worth the risk, so in she went, bringing the child out alive.
For her gallantry, she received Royal commendation—an honour never before conferred upon a woman north of the Tweed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.