Despite the terrible sadness of Her Majesty the Queen’s death our meeting went ahead.  The Queen was a member of the Sandringham and West Newton WI since 1943.  After Jerusalem and a minute’s silence, we sang the National Anthem.

It was a busy meeting as we had our “Glorious Gords” competition judged by last year’s winner, Di Fletcher. This year’s winner was Liz Wingham, with this great selection:

We also had our “Flower of the Month” competition. Here are a few of the lovely flowers:

Julie asked for help with bandage making, especially sewing strips of material to make up bandages. Carole is running the bandage making session on Wednesday 14th. Please contact us for venue details. Future dates are on the Diary Dates page.

Carole talked about the Craft Group session on Friday 16th and planning ahead for Christmas and the Group Show in March 2023. All are welcome to attend, whatever you craft interest or ability. Please contact us for venue details.

We also did a collection of food to go to Ukraine, as New Forest for Ukraine had run out of food to send. Thank you to all those who donated. Over 50 van loads of donated items have now been delivered to Ukarine.

We also had a raffle run by Maureen and April.

We then had our talk about a female British Spy.  This was given by Jeremy Prescott – a retired Army Officer. 

Violette Szabo was born in 1921.  She married Etienne who was in the  French Foreign Legion and they had a daughter Tania.  A short while after her birth Etienne died fighting and so Violette needed to find employment.  She was recruited to the Special Operations Executive where she learnt many skills including how to parachute jump from an aeroplane and to decode messages using poems.  She worked only on two missions as on the second mission she was captured, interrogated, tortured and sent to various prisons and finally Ravensbruck Concentration Camp.  She was executed there  in 1945.  She was just 23 years old.

Her daughter Tania is still alive today.  She had the honour of collecting, as a child, posthumously the Victoria Cross and in France the Croix de Guerre.  Later in 1973 La Medaille de la Resistance.  Violette remains one of four women awarded the George Cross. Tania has since sold the George Cross and it now is on display at the Imperial War Museum.    To sum up, Jeremy Prescot described this remarkable young woman as courageous, beautiful, confident, driven by revenge for the death of her husband and had a sense of humour. 

The proceeds from the talk go to Combat Stress Charity.

Our next meeting is on Monday October 10 2022 at 7.30pm in the Village Hall.   The talk is entitled “In Grandpa’s Footsteps – a tale of two journeys by Mrs. E Barron MBE.  Guests are welcome – please contact Elaine  for more information.