Meet the remarkable 104-year-old who's the British Army's oldest surviving female veteran

Meet the remarkable 104-year-old who's the British Army's oldest

surviving female veteran

Keen to see the world and play her part in the war effort, Ena Collymore-Woodstock left Jamaica and soon had a pivotal role in the campaign

When Ena Collymore-Woodstock travelled by boat from Jamaica to England in 1943, in response to a war recruitment advertisement, she survived a torpedo attack.

Now at 103, still wearing pearls for special occasions and taking weekly online exercise classes, she is believed to be the oldest surviving female veteran of the British Army who volunteered for the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Her enthusiasm to be closer to the action of the Second World War informed the decisions Collymore­Woodstock made from the very moment she arrived in London as a 26-year-old. She was given a clerical job at the war office thanks to her experience of being a court clerk for Kingston Criminal Court.

But she objected, later explaining: "I didn't come here to do what I was doing at home. I told them that I hadn't joined up just to type. I wanted to see more of the world - I was very adventurous and wanted more responsibility and more action.

"They sent me to an evaluation unit where they decided where you could be placed. I was tested, and they said I could go into any unit, so I selected [the] anti-aircraft [service] and I started my training as a radar operator."

Her remarkable life has come to light thanks to the Women's Royal Army Corps Association (WRAC). When 108-year-old Anne Robson died in January this year, the charity launched a campaign called Find Our OATs to track down the next oldest surviving female veteran.

They found Collymore-Woodstock, who now resides between Jamaica and Barbados. 'We were determined to find our oldest surviving female veteran," says retired colonel Alison Brown, vice president of the charity. "We wanted to thank her, tell her story and reflect on her achievements."

Ena with a group of other West Indian girls arriving at camp

In the Forties there weren't many women in the army and very few black people but, as far as Collymore-Woodstock was concerned, there should be no boundaries in terms of gender, colour or class. "I wanted to do my part," she said in an interview with WRAC. "My group was the first group of women to leave the West Indies to volunteer to go to war. I felt special. We all knew we were doing things for the first time."

One of four children, Collymore-Woodstock was born on September 10, 1917 in Spanish Town, Jamaica to Madeline Louis, a postmistress, and Frank Augustin Collymore, a station master. She completed her primary school education at Central Branch School and went to St. Hugh's High School in 1929 - but lost her parents in her early 20s.

Jamaica was still a colony when she joined the war effort, but she was determined to prove that local women of her generation were capable "despite there being no female role models at the senior level of society in Jamaica".

'Tm proud to have helped set an example, which is something my family still hears [about] from others," she says. "Once, on a trip to the USA, I handed my passport to an officer who told me that she'd done a project about me when she was at school [in Jamaica] ... That was a lovely moment."

The 'ack-ack' girls lined up to meet officials

As a so-called "ack-ack" girl - defending the coast of Britain during 1943 and 1944 - Collymore­Woodstock was later deployed close to enemy lines in Belgium, and played a vital role defeating the Nazis, plotting the paths of incoming enemy planes.

"We liked everything we did. You had a good feeling - but you had to learn step by step," she adds. "I wasn't ever afraid. We didn't think much about what could go wrong. We didn't have any nasty surprises."

Nor did rationing seem to bother Collymore-Woodstock, who recalls: "I remember that when we got our weekly rations in, we'd invite people over and then have fun eating them up all in one go."

It was, however, harder to break with some of her "Jamaican habits", according to her son Robert.

"Being Jamaican, you have to sort of bathe every day, twice per day, so even though she was in Belgium and there was rationing of water and so on, she would always go and bathe first," he told the Jamaica Gleaner. "Some of the other girls would bathe once per week, so they would give her some of their water."

This is what Collymore-Woodstock still refers to as her 'World War Two bath".

"The lack of water we dealt with meant that, to this day, I can bathe in just a cup full of water. My family call it my war bath and we all laugh about it."

Ena trained as a barrister after the war

After she finished serving in Belgium, she returned to England where she trained to become a barrister at London's Gray's Inn. In 1948 she was called to the bar, and when she returned to Jamaica two years later, was appointed the country's first female clerk of the courts - becoming a crown solicitor in 1953, and resident magistrate until she retired in 1977. She was also, for 10 years, the chief commissioner of the Girl Guides.

She married Richard Woodstock, a civil servant, in 1951, and the couple had three children, Gareth, Robert and Marguerite. But despite being a member of the Order of Distinction Officer Class (OD), and a member of the British Empire (MBE), Collymore-Woodstock's wartime efforts had been largely forgotten on the world stage - until now.

Yet she never considered that her work during the war would be considered part of history: "Some things that you do at the time, which you feel are just small things, can turn out to mean a lot more to others."