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Nell joins the WRAC’s at the beginning of the war and was previously a housekeeper at the big hotel in Malven. She rose through the ranks to become a Squadron Officer in the WRAC and was in charge of some of the mainaerodromes in Bomber Squadron in the north of England. She was a catering officer and insisted that people were well fed.

She was attached to the main part of 617 Squadron Bomber Command which became famous as the ‘Dam Busters’.

In April 1943 I came home from school and my Mother said that Nell is here and she wants to speak to you. Why I questioned and I was told do as Nell tells you, which I did. I asked her again and was told to go outside. So I went up the garden and dead on 4.30pm, three Lancaster Bombers came over our house at approximately 100 feet. The crew were all weaving and the next day I went up into the garden again at the same time and coming from the back of the north hill they came again for the next 2 days. It was not until after the war when my mother was talking about Nell; who was my daughters God Mother, said you may have wondered why Nell always came over to see us, and I was required to make myself scarce and that was because it was the only time she could tell my mother of the of the awful loss of 617 Squadron and all the others, a loss of 847 planes between April and July Bomber Command suffered.

Nell had a friend in the WRAC’s whose duty it was to inform the next of kin of their tragic loss. Around ‘D’ Day Nell’s brother was killed in France. After retirement from the WRAF she was the catering officer for Worcester Porcelain and later died of a tumour.

This story was submitted to the People's War site by J J McKirdy (volunteer) of the CSV Action Desk at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Hereford and Worcester on behalf of K Davis (author) and had bee added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

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