Florence Green serving in the Women’s RAF as a waitress in the officer’s mess at WRAF Narborough in 1919
Veteran of the First World War who looked back on her service in the WRAF as ‘the time of my life’
Florence Green joined the Women’s Royal Air Force in September 1918, two months before the Armistice, and served for the next two years as an officers’ mess waitress. She is now thought to have been the last British and Commonwealth female veteran of that conflict. This accolade had previously been given to Gladys Powers, who died in Canada in August 2008 aged 109.
The story of Florence Green’s life and WRAF service came to light when Andrew Holmes, a British correspondent for the US-based Gerontology Research Group, traced her name using the National Archive.
The WRAF was an auxiliary organisation of the RAF, which had itself been founded in April 1918, by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. The WRAF, founded the following month with Violet Douglas-Pennant as its first commandant, was originally intended to provide female mechanics for the nascent RAF, thus freeing men for frontline war service.
In the event the new auxiliary force attracted huge enrolment, with women volunteering and being trained not only as aircraft mechanics, but as drivers, clerks, stores assistants, waitresses and a host of other ancillary duties. More than 32,000 women served with the WRAF, an astonishing expansion over the barely two years of its first existence. The WRAF in its first incarnation was disbanded in 1920.
Florence Green was born Florence Beatrice Patterson in Edmonton, London, in 1901. She was 17 when she applied to join the WRAF in which she served for the next two years as a waitress in the officers’ mess at RAF Marham, near King’s Lynn, Norfolk, and at nearby RAF Narborough. On November 11, 1918, aircraft from Marham “bombed” Narborough with bags of flower to celebrate the Armistice — Narborough’s squadrons replying with bags of soot.
Florence Green, who on her 110th birthday in 2011 described her WRAF service as “the time of my life”, was demobilised in 1919. In 1920 she married Walter Green, a railway worker, and the couple settled in King’s Lynn. They had a son and two daughters.
When a women’s auxiliary to the RAF was formed in the Second World War it was given the title Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). But the WRAF had a second incarnation in 1949 when it was the name given to a new permanent women’s air force, formed from the WAAF in February of that year. In the following decades links between the RAF and WRAF grew increasingly close and by the 1990s the existence of a separate force for women had come to seem an anachronism. The two Services formally merged in 1994, with the WRAF’s personnel becoming fully assimilated.
After her husband’s death in 1970 Florence Green continued to live in King’s Lynn with her daughter May. As a consequence of her “discovery” in 2009, her 110th birthday in February 2011 was celebrated in style, with her old station, RAF Marham, presenting her with a birthday card from the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton, and a cake baked by staff of the station’s officers’ mess. On that occasion, helping her to blow out the candles was 17-year-old steward Hannah Shaw, one of the youngest members of the staff of the officers’ mess at RAF Marham.
With the death of the retired Chief Petty Officer Claude Choules in Australia on May 5, 2011, she became the last known veteran of the Great War.
Florence Green, veteran of the First World War, was born on February 19, 1901. She died on February 4, 2012, aged 110
Richard Vaughan-Griffith
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Second Lieutenant in the Queen’s Own Hussars who was awarded the MC for his bravery in rescuing troops trapped under terrorist fire near Aden
Towards the close of the campaign in South Arabia in 1967, when all initiatives to hand over political power to a responsible successor administration had failed, British Forces had taken up a semi-circular defence of Aden port, town and outlying suburbs in preparation for complete withdrawal. Despite HMG’s declared intention to leave, the two local terrorist organisations continued to compete for support among the resident and immigrant Yemeni populations by the ferocity of their attacks on British positions and installations.
The outlying district of Al-Mansoura, to the north of the port, was held by 1st Battalion The Lancashire Regiment, supported by C Squadron The Queen’s Own Hussars. Al-Mansoura and the neighbouring district of Sheik ‘Othman were subjected to intensive attack by day and night, as the terrorists were able to pull back to the safety of the Western Aden Protectorate no longer under British control.
On the morning of September 8, a foot patrol of The Lancashire Regiment was ambushed in a built-up area of Al-Mansoura and took cover in two nearby houses. Intense machinegun and rifle fire from surrounding buildings kept the patrol from breaking out and two men were wounded. The patrol commander called for support by radio and Second Lieutenant Vaughan-Griffith, with a half troop of C Squadron QOH, was instructed to go to the patrol’s assistance.
The task was complicated by difficulty in distinguishing the two houses where the patrol had taken cover from those from where the terrorists were firing. Vaughan-Griffith eventually pinpointed one house by a beret held out of a window on the end of a broomstick. Suppressing the terrorists’ fire with his vehicle’s Browning machineguns, he called forward a Saracen armoured personnel carrier from his squadron base and manoeuvred it into a position to allow the infantrymen in one of the houses to climb in through the vehicle’s rear doors.
Having escorted the Saracen to safety at The Lancashire Regiment’s base, he returned to the scene and extracted the remaining infantrymen by reversing the Saracen up to the house where they had taken cover, allowing them to climb in the rear. In course of the two actions, which extended over a period of two hours, it was estimated that six terrorists were killed and seven others wounded.
During each evacuation, Vaughan-Griffith was obliged to keep his scout car stationary, so he could see clearly what was happening and maintain radio contact with the other vehicles. This exposed his car to attack by “Blindicide” anti-tank bazookas, with which the terrorists were known to be well supplied, and also to the threat of a grenade being lobbed into his vehicle turret from the upper storey of one of the nearby buildings.
The citation for the Military Cross awarded to Vaughan-Griffith four months later praised his action under most difficult conditions, his outstanding courage, leadership and determination. A week or so after this incident, his Saladin armoured car ran over an anti-tank mine that blew off one complete front wheel station and slightly injured his driver and gunner. Although himself shaken by the explosion, he helped his injured crewmen into the back of an accompanying Saracen APC, in the course of which they came under terrorist fire, and photographed his damaged vehicle before taking cover in the Saracen.
Richard Derek Lloyd VaughanGriffith was the son of Colonel Trevor Vaughan-Griffith, who served in Probyn’s Horse of the Indian Army before transfer to the British Army on the grant of independence to India in 1947. The family lived in Suffolk, and Vaughan-Griffith attended Framlingham College, where he excelled on the sports field, before going to RMA Sandhurst from where he was commissioned into the Queen’s Own Hussars in December 1966.
After service as a troop leader in Aden and Hong Kong and as a Squadron second-in-command in Germany, he was posted to Sandhurst as an instructor. He later served as Adjutant of the Queen’s Own Hussars before leaving the army to begin a career in the security business.
Following a period undertaking kidnapping negotiations on behalf of the Lloyd’s insurance market and then as managing director of a United Kingdom-based risk management consultancy, in 1992 he formed MacIvor Grant Ltd to undertake a contract with a drilling company operating in Indonesia and Pakistan. The company was successful and it expanded first into international risk consultancy and then political risk analysis. It later opened an office in Houston, Texas, specialising in services to the global oil industry.
A natural sportsman, very popular with his brother officers and his men, Vaughan-Griffith maintained regular contact with his old troop sergeant until the latter’s death last year. He was instrumental in organising the informal gatherings of regimental friends known as the Rocking Horse Lunches, an irreverent reference to the White Horse of Hanover cap badge of the Queen’s Own Hussars.
He married first Jan Halliley, by whom he had a son and daughter, and second Jennifer Young, all of whom survive him, together with a stepson and stepdaughter.
Richard D. L. Vaughan-Griffith, MC, soldier and businessman, was born on December 5, 1945. He died of cancer on January 4, 2012, aged 66
Submariner who served with distinction in the Mediterranean during the war and was later appointed Flag Officer Submarines
Iwan Raikes was an experienced and distinguished submariner. His final appointment in 1974 followed that of his father, Admiral Sir Robert Raikes, who was also Flag Officer Submarines some 38 years earlier.
He entered Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1935, passing out at the outbreak of war and joining the heavy cruiser Sussex as a midshipman. Sussex operated in the Indian Ocean protecting Allied merchant traffic and sinking German shipping. She returned home for refit in March 1940 but was bombed in a Glasgow dock; the over-enthusiastic fire brigade capsized her and Raikes was forced to escape in his pyjamas.
Raikes transferred to the battlecruiser Repulse, taking part in the Norwegian campaign. He volunteered for submarines in 1941, having served briefly in the destroyer Beagle on Atlantic convoy duty.
His first submarine was the Sealion, initially commanded by the redoubtable Commander (later Rear-Admiral) Ben Bryant, notable for his three DSOs and the DSC. Under Lieutenant-Commander R. G. Colvin (who was later lost in the Mediterranean while commanding the Tigris), the Sealion had a frustrating time being manoeuvred to meet the emergence of heavy German warships out of various ports from Brest all the way to north Norway. Save for the sinking of a couple of coasters, the patrol passed without success. Raikes left her in June 1942 to join the new submarine Saracen, at that time named P247, captained by Lieutenant (later Captain) M. G. R. Lumby (obituary, February 6, 2002) as the torpedo officer. On Saracen’s first work-up patrol and positioned by signals intelligence, she intercepted the U-boat U335, which was on passage on the surface, and sank her with a full salvo of six torpedoes. There was only one survivor; the captain was seen to raise his arms above his head and disappear.
Transferring from Sealion with Raikes, the second-in-command of Saracen was the highly decorated Edward Young (obituary, January 31, 2003), the first RNVR officer to command a submarine and the author and designer of the penguin logo for Penguin Books.
By November 1943, Saracen was in the Mediterranean supporting the Allied landings in North Africa when Lumby spotted the Italian submarine Granito on the surface and thus became one of only six COs to have sunk two enemy submarines.
By the time that Young left Saracen in the spring of 1943 to take the commanding officer’s qualifying course in the UK, Raikes had so impressed Lumby that he was appointed second-in-command in his place, aged 22. Saracen continued operations in the central Mediterranean, sinking shipping and attacking railway trains and tunnels as well as a schooner-building yard. In April, a successful patrol involved the sinking of two transports and a liner, during which the submarine survived a 46-depth charge counter-attack.
Operation Frederick, the British secret service landing by Saracen of three agents at Cupabia Bay in Corsica to gain intelligence before a possible landing, was successful until Simon Andrei and Guy Verstraete were betrayed, tortured and shot. Antoine d’Istria survived; in December 1994 a granite monument to the mission with the bronze shield of the Saracen was unveiled on the landing beach 50 years later. Iwan Raikes was represented by a cousin, Colonel Graham Raikes.
For his courage and efficiency in this very successful submarine, Raikes was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
When Saracen returned to Algiers, Raikes went home for the commanding officer’s course, after which he was appointed captain of the ancient training submarine H43. (Saracen was lost on her next patrol, all but two of her crew being made prisoners.) He later commanded the new submarine Varne, completed in July 1944 and in which he undertook two uneventful Norwegian Sea patrols before the end of the war in Europe.
Raikes then took over the Virtue in Sydney, New South Wales. Virtue was based at Bombay (Mumbai) for anti-submarine training and was sold for scrap at Cochin in May 1946.
After the war, Raikes commanded two further submarines, the Talent and the Aeneas. He was promoted to commander and from 1953 had a rather more relaxing and highly enjoyable two years in Malta working for the logistics division of the Nato Allied Forces Mediterranean. This was followed by two years as second-in-command of the cruiser Newcastle in the Far East, enduring 19 months of family separation, normal for the times. On return he commanded the Third Submarine Squadron and was promoted to captain.
His next command, a frigate squadron from the frigate Loch Insh, involved him taking part in one of the more effective expressions of British sea power since the Second World War: the thwarting of Iraq’s claim in July 1961 under Abd al-Karim Qasim to the newly independent Kuwait, at that time the source of 50 per cent of Britain’s oil. Royal Marines landed from the commando carrier Bulwark were the first to arrive, backed by tanks from the local amphibious squadron, the large carrier Victorious and several minesweepers escorted by numerous destroyers and frigates.
With army and RAF reinforcements, Britain garrisoned Kuwait until October, when the Arab League took over protection. On Gulf patrol, Loch Insh salvaged the Spanish tanker Mequineza, Raikes eventually receiving the habitually mean award of Admiralty salvage money.
After an Admiralty tour on the naval staff, Raikes was sent in 1965 out to Singapore as the director of plans and operations on the tri-Service combined staff of the C-in-C Far East, Air Chief Marshal Sir John Grandy. This was at the height of the “confrontation” against Indonesia which, under President Sukarno, was attempting to subvert and infiltrate the new Federation of Malaysia. It involved a very large British involvement in troops, aircraft and some 50 warships, including three aircraft carriers. Although Gurkhas had some of the fiercest fighting as late as March 1966, peace was signed in August after the takeover in Indonesia by General Suharto. Raikes was appointed CBE for his contribution.
On his return home, he became a student at the Imperial Defence College before taking up his final and seventh sea command, the large guided-missile destroyer Kent. He was promoted rear-admiral in 1970 and appointed naval secretary, responsible for the career pattern and promotion of the higher officer ranks and oversight of the naval officer community. One of his tasks was to design the naval career of the Prince of Wales, which culminated in the Prince commanding the minesweeper Bronington.
On appointment as Flag Officer First Flotilla, overseeing half the destroyers and frigates in the Navy, Raikes was promoted vice-admiral. During his final tour as Flag Officer Submarines, from 1974 to 1976, a new class of nuclear attack submarine was produced despite the endemic retrenchment in the naval budget. He was noted for his successful resistance to a move of his administration to Northwood, Middlesex, where he felt that he would lose his autonomy inside the Fleet headquarters. He was appointed KCB in 1976.
In retirement he was a supporter of St Michael’s College, Llandaff, and governor of Christ College, Brecon. His tremendous enthusiasm for fishing led him to become chairman of the United Usk Fishermen’s Association for 15 years. In recognition of his work for the Church in Wales he was made a deputy lieutenant for Powys in 1983.
He is survived by his wife, Primrose, and their son and daughter.
Vice-Admiral Sir Iwan Raikes, KCB, CBE, DSC, Flag Officer Submarines, 1974-76, was born on April 21, 1921. He died on December 27, 2011, aged 90
