My mother, Jean Charnley (nee Christison), who has died aged 92, was one of many women for whom the second world war represented a door to freedom and travel – opportunities which, as a miner's daughter in the 1930s, would otherwise have been limited.
Born in Coxhoe, County Durham, she had connections to both Ireland (and Catholicism) through her mother and to Scotland (and coal-mining) via her father. She was the youngest of the family, with four older brothers, and enjoyed school, particularly history and poetry, but opted to do a shorthand and typing course when she left.
In spite of parental disapproval, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (the WAAF) in 1940 and she spent time in Egypt and Algeria. After the war, she returned to Durham and worked as a secretary first at the Ministry of "Ag and Fish", then at Dryburn hospital, in the newly created NHS. In 1952 she married Robert Charnley, an RAF communications man whom she had met during her WAAF days. So began a busy life of successive RAF postings around the world, until stability came in 1968 in the shape of a permanent home in south Devon.
The biggest tragedy of her life was the loss of her daughter, Julie, at the age of three in a car accident in Hong Kong in 1959; she always said she felt dreadfully alone at that time, struggling to cope with the "stiff upper lip" military approach.
Children, work, friends and community involvement filled the years, and she became a well-known figure in the small town of Ivybridge, where she lived for 40 years. She was a member of the fundraising committee formed to raise money for a new scout and guide hut, captain of the ladies' bowls team and a member of the Elders' Council, working for older people's rights.
Robert died in 1997. She is survived by four children and three grandchildren.
