ROYAL Star & Garter celebrated the extraordinary work and experience of a WWII veteran on International Women’s Day as part of its Veterans’ Voice project.
Kay Thomas was a plotter in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and, at 105 years old, is one of the last remaining women to have served during Battle of Britain campaign.
She now lives at the charity’s Home in High Wycombe.
Veterans’ Voice aims to give a platform to residents in Royal Star & Garter’s Homes, and the people who use its services, ensuring they are not overlooked because of their disability or dementia.
Kay is one of several remarkable women at Royal Star & Garter who have served their country, during and after WWII.
After school she had started training as a nurse, but joined the WAAF when she was 20.
During the Battle of Britain in 1940, the country stood alone against Hitler’s seemingly unstoppable military power and came under a large-scale attack from the Luftwaffe.
Kay was working as a plotter, 60ft below ground in ‘The Bunker’ at RAF Uxbridge, and tracking enemy planes as they made their way to Britain on bombing raids. Receiving information from radar stations and the Observer Corps, they used a pusher on the end of a long rod to display the positions of the aircraft on a map drawn on a huge table.
Senior officers would observe tensely from the gallery above. Kay remembered on several occasions seeing Winston Churchill looking down on them as she and other plotters worked. She recalled that his face was “wreathed in cigar smoke.”
Kay was demobbed shortly after the war ended in 1945, and became a bookkeeper after raising her family.