Women’s Auxiliary Air Force veteran to lay wreath during Armed Forces celebrations

Weymouth Town Council is honoured to welcome Weymouth resident Mrs Mary Wrigley, 103, to lay a wreath during the town’s annual Armed Forces Weekend celebrations.

Mrs Wrigley is a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) veteran and will lay the RAF wreath during the service of commemoration on Sunday 22 June.

This will be especially poignant as Mary was married to a Spitfire pilot, and a Spitfire flypast is due to take place along the seafront (subject to weather and serviceability) just before the service.

Mary moved to Weymouth just over 13 years ago. Her sister was already living in the town and she enjoyed visiting her so much that she also decided to make the move. But life before Weymouth was very different.

Aged 19, Mary volunteered to serve in the Women’s’ Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) from 1941, when conscription began, until 1946. She trained at RAF Bridgnorth before moving to the RAF Records’ Office in Gloucestershire where all RAF personnel’s service records, combat reports, Operations Record books, were maintained. 

In 1943 Mary, aged 21, volunteered for an unknown posting overseas and found herself initially at RAF West Kirby, near Liverpool, for kitting and ‘jabbing’ before setting sail on a troop ship from Liverpool. 

After some weeks at sea, facing the threats of U-boats and sea mines, Mary and 29 other WAAFs disembarked at Port Said, Egypt and were taken to tented accommodation, in stifling heat, at RAF Almaza near Cairo.

Mary volunteered for a posting to Palestine, near Tel Aviv, where she continued with her war work for some 18 months within the Engineering Squadron which serviced Spitfires, Hurricanes and Anson aircraft. She even enjoyed a back seat return flight in a fighter, to Cairo, but on the return flight shared her seat with a box of eggs! It was during this posting that she met her future husband Gordon, a Spitfire pilot, in 1944 and they became engaged just after VE Day in 1945, which for many of the service personnel was spent on the beach! 

They married in September 1945 in St George’s Church (now a cathedral), Jerusalem, surrounded by their military comrades and their necessarily short honeymoon was spent in and around Beirut.

In December 1945, Mary was posted back to the UK to be demobbed at Liverpool. In 1946 Gordon also returned to the UK for ‘demob’ but re-joined the RAF in 1950 as a flying instructor. 

Mary and their now family of two continued to move around due to Gordon’s various postings to Finningley, South Cerney, RAF Wahn (Cologne), Tern Hill, RAF Khormaksar (Aden, Yemen, where Mary worked as PA to the Director of Women’s Education for the Aden Government), and Cosford. Gordon then changed branch to Air Traffic Control serving at Ballykelly (Northern Ireland; a ‘V’ Bomber deployment airfield), Thorney Island and eventually the Ministry of Defence in London in 1975.

After many years of both direct service to the Crown (WAAF) and indirect service as part of the RAF ‘family’, Mary has kindly agreed to lay the RAF wreath at the Weymouth Armed Forces Sunday service of commemoration on 22 June. She will be assisted by her daughter Lynnette, her son Gavin, Group Captain Rob Tripp (RAF Retired) and an Air Training Corps cadet from 1606 (Weymouth) ATC.

Full List of Events for Armed Forces Weekend

From the Spitfire flypast, to the music, parade and military vehicle displays and convoy, Weymouth Town Council host an array events over Saturday 21st, Sunday 22nd and Monday 23rd June. For the full list and timings, visit our Armed Forces page.

ENDS

Notes to Editor

Images courtesy of Mary’s daughter Lynette.

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