Elizabeth Lovejoy, (nee Laver, and adopted c.1911 by Charles Lovejoy), was born in 1898 in Windsor, Berks and died in 1954 at Southend-on-Sea.
Lady Londonderry's privately-founded and hugely-successful Women's Legion accepted girls as young as 16 years, though parental permission was needed to join the Legion, up to the age of 21 years. My Auntie Betty joined the Legion at the age of 17 with Grandpa Charlie Lovejoy's permission, in one of the first intakes in 1915. She trained as a motor driver and mechanic at Twickenham, and drove Ambulances, first in Flanders for the Belgians because the War Office wouldn't allow Legionnaires to serve in France, and then in Northern France for the British Army (after General Haig grudgingly-agreed to accept the help of the Legionnaires) until 1919. Somewhere I have a faded photo print of her leaning on the bonnet of a WW1 period Ambulance, and scribbled on the back is "Betty in Flanders"
She was either seconded to work with the RASC at that point or with a Casualty Clearing Station, she never told me which. She did tell me she'd actually captured the crew of a downed German Observation plane, which crash-landed almost alongside the road she was driving with a casualty in the ambulance back to the CCS to which she was attached.
Apparently she and her crew had "acquired" both a pistol and a rifle, from casualties she'd transported, so she and her colleague were armed, and the German aircrew surrendered to the girls! She got a couple of souvenirs out of that, the German Observer's Mondragon Rifle (which I was allowed to play with on special occasions when I visited her house, she told me gleefully she'd smuggled it home in a cello case), and the tail empennage of the aircraft (I recall she told me it was an Albatross) which she kept on display in her hallway at their house in Winchmore Hill.
In 1919 and 1920, she continued in France as a driver working with the Labour Units Recovering The Fallen, because she'd lost her dear Uncle, Sgt. C1027 Walter Tindall, MM. 16th KRRC and she wanted to do her bit in recovering the remains of the dead.
Then, on returning to the UK, she lived with Grandma Maud and her younger sisters Mercia and Jose at Grandpa's Bull Hotel in Peascod Street Windsor, until he died. Grandma Maud, almost prostrate with grief at the loss of her second husband (Charlie had adopted my Aunts Betty and Mercia Laver in 1911) they moved to Southend on Sea after Grandpa Charlie died suddenly in 1921.
Auntie Betty wanted to earn her own living, and became a Companion and Chauffeur to a French widow who had a big house on the Cliffs at Westcliffe on Sea taking her employer touring all over the UK and the Continent. She sent daily picture post-cards home to the family on each trip, which were stuck into an album, eventually coming into my hands when my Mother died, until she met Uncle Phillip Denham, and married him sometime around 1930 or 31. They bought a house in rural Winchmore Hill. So her WVS Service during WW2 was in that part of London.
She joined the WVS at the outbreak of the 1939-45 War, since it didn't look like the Legion was going to be successfully revived and by then she had a young daughter, my cousin Brenda born in 1934.
After Uncle Phillip retired from the Board of Sarson's, they bought a house in Fermoy Road, Thorpe Bay, not far from my parent's house in Marlborough Road.
I can remember her clearly, taking part in official post 1945 Parades marching with ex-WVS members, wearing her medals, the BWM and BVM from 1914-18, plus a Croix de Guerre from both Belgium and from France, and the Defence Medal, and the 1939-45 War Medal. I was still a teenager when she died of lung cancer in 1954, and I'm sad that I never got to know her better.
Hopefully, this bit of family history will survive as a memorial.
