As part of Remembrance Day, Mrs Mitchell has been researching the KC Old Girls who were part of the forces during WW2. She gave a fascinating assembly to the school on the history of these inspirational women who were all members of our alumnae. Please see below for some of their stories.
Joan Félècie Gurry
Joan was born on 26th Feb. 1916 in Wandsworth, South London. She lived on the Isle of Sheppey, where her father was director of a large household pottery business.
During WW1 her father, Major W.E. Gurry, had served in the Royal Engineers and been awarded the Military Cross. During WW2 he was the supervisor of the Kent Special Constabulary in addition to his regular job. With that example, it is easy to see why his daughter should have joined the WRNS, despite having married Alec Johnson on 10th August 1939 at All Souls Church, Langham Place.
Joan began her training as a WRNS in February 1942, where Hilda Chislett, another old KC girl, was an instructor. She then worked as a Motor Transport Driver, driving everything from 30cwt lorries to small Hillman cars. Joan enjoyed the work, because it was so varied, from shifting heavy loads to driving Admirals and other high ranking officers around.
Joan was on duty in the City of Bath during the blitz in April 1942and an unexploded bomb lodged in the concrete floor of the garage. She had to help move 50 vehicles out of the building without disturbing the bomb. She said: ‘I was the last Wren to move a 2 ton lorry within 15 yards of the bomb hole. Believe me, I have never been so scared in my life.’ Fortunately for Joan, the bomb turned out to be a ‘dud’ and she was never in real danger!
Joan Became an WRNS Third Officer in 1943 and spent time working in Liverpool, a major port city.
Both Joan and her husband survived the War and settled down to married life in Kent, where she raised her sons, Christopher and Bryan. Joan died in 1986, aged 70.
Beryl May Lukey
Beryl was born in 1911 in the Elham district of Kent. Her father was Frederick Lukey, a wine merchant in Folkestone.
In 1939 Beryl worked as a receptionist and book keeper at a hotel on the Marine parade in Eastbourne, before joining the WRNS, where she rose to the rank of Third Officer.
In 1941 she married John Hughes in Folkestone before he left the country to serve as an Army Chaplain in the Middle East.
Joan Fasham
Joan was born in Thanet in 1923. Her father, E.T. Fasham had been Mayor of Thanet and a prominent member of the Methodist Church in that area, being a Circuit Steward and a member of the Free Church Council. Joan’s uncle was a Methodist minister.
Joan had remained with the school when it moved to Pembury in 1939 and she left from the Sixth Form in the summer of 1940. She started training as a nursery nurse in Tunbridge Wells, but decided that was not the right career for her. So, she moved back to Thanet and worked in the tax office in Cliftonville before joining the WRNS.
After she was demobbed at the end of the War, Joan trained in catering and worked in the restaurant of D H Evans, a big department store in London and later, running the school canteen service based in Swanley.
Joan married Thomas Griffin in 1948 and had at least one son. There was a shortage of housing in post-war Britain, because so many homes were destroyed by bombing, so Joan spent the first years of her marriage living on a converted Thames’ barge moored to the wharf of a bombed out brewery, but complete with hot water, central heating and electricity!
Joan died in Brighton in 1996 aged 73.
Katherine Vanda Blinks
Vanda was born in Cranbrook in 1926, where her father, Mercer (Harry) Blinks, had a butcher’s shop.
Vanda moved with the school to Pembury in 1939. She was a keen hockey player and was in the 1st XI as Left back. Vanda left school when she was 15 in 1941. She then went to train in commerce at York House in Tunbridge Wells before going to work for the Weald Electrical Supply Company at Hawkhurst.
In 1943 Vanda was called up to serve in the WRNS where she ‘enjoyed her work very much, until she was demobbed at the end of the War.
After the War, Vanda moved to Essex, where she worked for an insurance company in Southend. In 1956 she married Cyril Dyer.
Vanda died in Gloucestershire in 2016, aged 89.
Audrey Mary Angwin
Audrey was born in Cardiff in 1919 and attended Kent College in Folkestone, where she took part in the annual Nativity plays and played the piano in music competitions.
After she left school Audrey studied at Studley College in Warwickshire from 1938. Studley College had been founded as an agricultural and horticultural college for women, offering diplomas and degrees in those subjects. In her final year there Audrey found herself studying alongside girls who had been recruited into the Land Army and practising what to do if outside in the fields during an air raid.
In 1942 Audrey was called up into the WRNS and found herself drafted to Scotland to work as a gardener. She described the area where she worked as ‘very beautiful and there are the most gorgeous views, snow-clad mountains, hills and water.’
After she was demobbed, Audrey moved to Gloucestershire.
Audrey did not marry and she died in 1972 in Marshfield, Gloucestershire aged 53.
Trixie Tipples
Trixie was born in 1920 at Iden Grange Farm, Marden
Trixie boarded at the school in Folkestone and left from the Sixth Form in the summer of 1938. Her ambition at the time was to take up chicken farming.
Coming from a farming background it was not surprising that Trixie chose to join the Woman’s Land Army and she worked on various farms in the area around Staplehurst until she married in 1945.
In June 1945 Trixie married Lieutenant Robert Barr of the Queens Royal Regiment at Lenham Church. Like Trixie he had grown up on a farm in Kent, East Lenham Farm, and the Barr family continue to farm that land today. Their son, Robert, was born in July 1946 and he continued the family farming tradition in Horsmonden.
Trixie died in 2020, aged 100.
Eileen Heron
Eileen was born in Folkestone in 1916. Her father ran a large grocery store in Sandgate Street and, after she left school, Eileen trained in cake decorating and as a choclatier. She worked in her father’s store until 1940.
Eileen had been taught to drive by her father in 1934 – 6 months after it was compulsory to take a driving test to obtain a licence! In 1938 she had also done a short course to learn how to drive a lorry. So, in 1939 Eileen volunteered as an ARP ambulance driver.
As the War progressed rationing was introduced and cake decorating was no longer possible, so Eileen volunteered for the ATS and was sent to Hereford for her induction course in motor transport. She worked in this field until she was ‘demobbed’ in 1946, becoming an instructor.
In 1945 Eileen was on a course with Princess Elizabeth, who had joined the ATS as soon as she became 18! Writing for the Old Girls’ News Eileen described the future Queen as “an exceedingly charming little person with crisp, curly brown hair, lovely big grey-blue eyes, a beautiful complexion and a very charming smile.”
In 1947 Eileen married Richard Somers Hall. She died in 2010 aged 94.
Joyce Pimblott
Joyce was born in 1924 in Lancashire, but her family moved to Brussels, Belgium, when she was three. She was sent to Kent College as a boarder, but when WW2 broke out her family also returned to England.
Joyce left school, aged 16, when she was in Year 11. She went to secretarial college to learn shorthand and typing before joining FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) when she was 17.
When it was discovered that Joyce spoke fluent French and was good at solving crosswords she was recruited into SOE (Special Operations Executive) who were tasked with going behind enemy lines to assist the French Resistance.
Although it was likely that Joyce was trained to be an agent she never went to France. Her role was to receive messages sent by agents and to decode them. This was highly skilled work as it involved listening to very short messages and recording them accurately as the agents in France could not spend long signalling in case they were discovered by the Nazis. The messages that Joyce received played an important part in planning the D-Day operations in 1944.
After the War she went to Nuremburg as a translator in the war crimes trials of the Nazi leaders. In 1954 Joyce married Norman Paulson and settled down to raise her family. She died in 2002 aged 78.