No, she wasn’t a ferry pilot, but to claim Forum interest she worked for a hosiery company in Nottingham during the war making parachutes and used to firewatch on the roof of the building during air raids.
She was also strafed by a German bomber during an attempted attack on the Merlin testing plant just up the road from where she lived.
She’s a very independant clever old stick with a lot of tales to tell, she doesn’t know it, but my brother has hired a stretched Limo to take her and her mates out for a meal on Saturday, it will probably be a riotous event that I am looking forward to attending.
I just think that in her own way, she is an old war hero that should be remembered, she did her bit.
By: wessex boy - 13th April 2006 at 16:49
Pete, ‘appy Birthday to her!
By: dhfan - 13th April 2006 at 16:37
Mum’s are pretty special.
Mine’s 80 in May. We’re taking her to a beer festival to celebrate her birthday!
By: Pete Truman - 13th April 2006 at 12:41
You know what old people are like about modern technology, well get this, at 90, despite never having one before, my mother is desperate for a microwave, I’ve just been over to Braintree and bought her one for her birthday, my one consession is big turnable knobs rather than touch technology, she would have to be forever changing her glasses for that.
Just as a further comment, her late brother was an armourer on HMS Illustrious in the Pacific, I have his gun clearance periscope next to my elbow, he always thought that the Corsair was the greatest plane that ever flew.
By: ollieholmes - 12th April 2006 at 18:59
They were tough women in those days. Can’t see Posh Spice and Chantelle volunteering.
Sorry but the thought of those 2 being taken up in a unheated aircraft and made to jump out a hole in the bottom of the fuesalage made me laugh.
Id prefer to watch them do that than all the rubbish there is on tv about them now.
By: Moggy C - 12th April 2006 at 18:15
Did anyone catch the 91 year old WAAF who was yesterday finally awarded her parachute wings from her training before she was dropped into France to act as a courier for the resistance?
They were tough women in those days. Can’t see Posh Spice and Chantelle volunteering.
Moggy
By: Pete Truman - 12th April 2006 at 17:42
Not that I need much excuse, but I’ll raise a glass of Adnams to her over the weekend.
My mother is coming up to 94. Her wartime memories are of the Liverpool Blitz.
Moggy
Cheers for that Moggy, we have something in common, our mothers were both Lancashire Lassies, mine being born in Leyland where my grandfather was retained at the vehicle factory during the 1st World War, my other grandfather being inducted into the Royal Scots, despite being from Nottingham, I still have his dress cap and Sam Brown belt.
I am envious of the pint of Adnams, I think that the best that the pub will offer on Saturday is John Smiths smooth, the big companies having destroyed the Nottingham brewing industries, apart from Kimberley Ales of course, perhaps I’ll smuggle some in.
There you go, me and me mum, Trafalgar Square on our first visit, 1958, she would kill me for publishing this, did we always wear shorts in those days, refer to Wessex thread.
By: Andy in Beds - 12th April 2006 at 11:54
My dad, ex-Pvt. Harry Jones also celebrated a birthday this week (April 10th).
He’s a youngster at 83 years though.
Harry served first with the Suffolk Regiment and later with the Air Formation Signals in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, winning a mention in dispatches and getting himself wounded too in southern Italy.
(His evacuation to Durban, South Africa on an Italian hospital ship is an epic in it’s own right)
He still gets wistful at the sight of a Dakota (also a Jeep and a Thompson sub-machine gun).
Me ,my wife, my sister and her partner will be seeing him on Saturday.
Mum (77) will be providing lunch.
Thanks
Andy
By: Moggy C - 12th April 2006 at 11:37
I’ll certainly ask her.
So what was your Grandad called then?
😉
Moggy
She was telling me the other day how she met this legless fighter pilot in T J Hughes’s 😀
By: Snapper - 12th April 2006 at 11:29
Well done to her, and well done to you for sharing.
moggy – she didn’t see a bloke with a stick in one hand and toast in another stumbling around did she?
By: Moggy C - 12th April 2006 at 10:22
Not that I need much excuse, but I’ll raise a glass of Adnams to her over the weekend.
My mother is coming up to 94. Her wartime memories are of the Liverpool Blitz.
Moggy
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April 12, 2006 at 10:17 am