WWII: Mum's Army turned into crack shots and Morse code experts

Jump to: navigation, search

While Britain’s young men and women were away at the Front during the Second World War, the home fires were kept burning by those left behind – the too old, the too young and the women who stepped into the men’s shoes. As well as a Dad’s Army, a Mum’s Army emerged. Pat Parkin met Derby woman Ninkey Coe, now aged 93, who was a leading light in the Women’s Home Guard Auxiliary and later helped run vital agricultural camps.

Front page DET January 22, 1967

Ron Coe in uniform during the Second World War

Early days: Ninky Coe as a young woman in 1931. She went on to play a leading role in the Women’s Home Guard Auxiliary during the war

Perfect partners: Ninkey and her husband, Ron Coe, on their wedding day in 1940. He went into the Navy and she joined the Mum’s Army

BACK in the 1940s, when the call went out for women to learn to defend their homes and families in the event of Britain being invaded by the Germans, Ninkey Coe was one of the earliest recruits in Derby.

A young mother with a small son and a husband in the Navy, she had already been helping the war effort at home by working for the War Agricultural Committee, so becoming part of the local Women’s Home Guard Auxiliary seemed a natural next step.

“It really was something of a Mum’s Army,” laughed Ninkey, now 93, “just like the Home Guard had become known as Dad’s Army.”

one of the leading lights in the group, which had responded to the call from politician Edith Somerskill. Well-known local women like Lady Aiton, Mrs Herbert Strutt, Mrs Leapingwell and Dr Crowley joined the committee and Ninkey became secretary and organiser.

“Sometimes, people laughed wondering what a group of women could do but, at the time, there were great fears there may be an invasion and it was important those left back home were able to respond if the worst happened,” she said.

They had to do the usual women’s jobs like fundraising and organising dances, but they also became skilled in things like sending Morse code messages and handling a rifle.

Funds they raised were used to buy a cache of TT rifles and rifle classes were arranged around the town centre.

Said Ninkey: “An ex-Army sergeant named McGregor, who lived in Normanton, was our instructor. He was really good and took us to different rifle ranges which had been set up all over the place.

“One I remember was under the Trent Buses office in Meadow Road and another in St Mary’s Gate. We were a real mixture of women and, of course, some were better than others. I had some crack shots in the group and, on one occasion, we beat the Home Guard in a shooting contest.

“One of my best shots was Joyce Scattergood who still lives in Derby. She was fantastic. We became good friends and I was godmother to her son (or she to mine). We still exchange Christmas and birthday cards. Those times were pretty special,” said Ninkey.

As well as rifle shooting and learning Morse code, the women learned field cooking and unarmed combat.

After the war, when Ninkey’s husband Ron Coe returned home to a job with the Ministry of Agriculture, she was asked to work on an agricultural camp set up at Ticknall.

Food was still in short supply and being rationed. The aim of the camps was to get farms back on track as soon as possible to produce much needed supplies.

Volunteers from all over the country, as well as Europe, came to work on local farms, doing all sorts of jobs from planting lettuce, potatoes and strawberries to pulling flax.

Each week, 150 people would arrive, paying £1 a week for their lodgings and food, and receiving wages of one shilling and sixpence (7.5p) an hour for their work on the farms.

“People couldn’t afford holidays in those early years after the war, so it was a way of having a paid holiday and seeing the countryside, a bit like Butlin’s without the red coats,” she laughed.

Some of the young people liked it so much they would stay on for several weeks and companies would send members of their staff in groups. Ninkey cooked the meals and organised social events, including a Saturday night hop in a large hut.

“I would have to put borasic crystals on the floor to make it slippery enough for dancing. We charged them sixpence (2.5p) to come in and spent the proceeds on new records for them to dance to.

“They also used the village pubs and most of them had a very good time. I still receive Christmas cards from some of them after all these years.”

The camp closed in 1948 after one of the visitors, from Kent, went down with a mystery illness which was later diagnosed as polio. He was put in an iron lung but died in the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary.

“That was a very sad day. We paid for a taxi for his wife to visit him. That was the end of that camp,” she said.

Later, Ninkey and Ron were popular licensees at the Bell and Castle pub in Burton Road, where weddings and social events were a speciality. They ran it for 13 years and Ninkey still gets stopped in the street by former customers who remember the Coes’ days there.

Born in London, where her family lived in some comfort with a housekeeper and two maids, Ninkey met Ron through a friend. His parents worked for a family called Compton Inglefields at Flower Lilies, near Turnditch, where his father was the chauffeur.

The couple married in Coventry and celebrated their golden wedding in 1990.

Despite her advanced years, Ninkey is still a lively chatterbox and takes an interest in everything going on. She has travelled widely and never misses her daily glass of wine.

In recent years, she has turned to fundraising again, drumming up a great deal of money for local charities and after taking up computer studies in her 90th year, spends a lot of her time e-mailing family and friends.

“If you don’t try things, you never know what you are missing,” she says. “I’ve always been something of a risk taker.”