Digest of stories from the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph: June 8^th, 1918.

An extraordinary story of the kidnapping of a Luton schoolgirl, Winnie Bates, an intelligent child of 11 years living at 100 Hartley Road, reached us this week. The girl attends Hitchin Road School, and is in Standard 4.

A Telegraph representative yesterday interviewed the child, who states that she was crossing Hitchin Road to go to school on Monday morning, when a small covered-in car passed her, containing two young ladies dressed in white, one of whom was driving.

They stopped and asked if she knew where Mrs Brown lived, and the girl, thinking they meant the mother of a playmate, directed them to a house higher up the road. According to the girl's story, they asked her to get in the car and ride there, but she said she would walk and did so.

When the car stopped higher up the road, it is alleged that one of the women got out and dragged the girl into the car and drove off, holding her while they journeyed out into the country.

The child asserts that they did not speak to her, but kept whispering to each other, and she believes they took her through Lilley. They drove through a gate into a field, then got out and told the girl the gate was locked, and that she must stay with the car.

They called out 'Harold' and disappeared, and the girl, left alone, declares that she found a hole in the hedge and crept through. She says that she ran across fields “for miles” and eventually got into the New Bedford Road.

When she got to Wardown, “having a penny in her pocket,” she travelled on a tram, and it was not till teatime that she arrived home. It is said that the child arrived in a very distressed condition, although she states that no harm was done to her in any way.

• Indignation was freely expressed last night at a meeting of the Luton War Pensions Committee at the revelations now being made of men collapsing under Army rigours as a result of having been wrongly passed through by medical boards. Although unable to attend the meeting, Alderman Staddon wrote that he wished that Medical Boards and National Service Representatives could bot see for themselves the folly and unfairness of trying to push men into the Army. The report before the Committee was the inevitable result of such action. And Councillor Primett told the meeting that many of these men had come to grief because they were on the border-line for being passed into the Army.

• For his gallantry, Pte Fred Wren (46998, Northumberland Fusiliers), whose home address is 27 Liverpool Road, Luton, has been awarded the Military Medal. Pte Wren, a stretcher bearer who has been in the Army nearly three years, says his award was “for showing conspicuous gallantry while dressing and carrying wounded men on the field under extraordinary shelling and rifle fire who would otherwise have been left in the hands of the enemy”. He added modestly: “I was only doing my duty, of course.” Pte Wren is pictured below, left.

• The honour of the Military Medal has also been conferred upon Pte Percy Appleby (20952, Beds Regiment), a reticent Luton lad whose home is at 56 Albert Road. All he says is “it was nothing great” and “only a matter of duty”. Pte Appleby was formerly with Messrs Brown & Green Ltd. He was slightly wounded and temporarily invalided in the earlier stages of the war. Pte Appleby is pictured above, right.

• A pleasant little ceremony took place at All Saints Church, Luton, on Sunday, the Rev W. Morgan, the priest-in-charge, being the recipient of four stoles, presented by the men lof the congregation in commemoration of his admission into priestly orders.

• The fraternity of wheelmen will not be sorry top learn that the Borough Engineer is arranging with Messrs Johnson Bros to have Hitchin Road, New Bedford Road and Dunstable Road tar-painted from the tramway terminus in each case to the borouugh boundary. A length of London Road, all of Biscot Road and several other thoroughfares in the centre of town are also to be similarly treated, and all who have had to endure the bumpiness of some of them will agree that another drop of tar wouldn't do them any harm.

• The land demonstration last Saturday was a surprise, and Luton has beaten Bedford by a long way. Even before the speeches there were 20 recruits, and the picturesquely attired land girls brought in another 40. An extra round of applause went to a tramcar conductress who, wearing the usual accessories of her calling, ran up the steps and joined the noble army of land lasses. Similarly an ovation was given to a postwoman – until it was found out she was only delivering letters to the Town Hall.

• Two men who were experiencing the prisoner of war status from both sides. On the left, Pte P. H. Evans (Cheshire Regiment), of 4 Clarendon Road, Luton, had been involved in the capture of a large party of Germans and several machine guns. On the right, Pte P. W. Manton (Beds Regiment), of 14 Chapel Street, Luton, had been a prisoner of war since February 1917, and was the grateful recipient of food parcels sent from Luton.