My grandmother Madge Gregory, who has died aged 99, was an unassuming person who nevertheless travelled the world, played a part in the war effort and made lasting friendships throughout her life.
Born Christina Madge Birkett in Nottingham to Percy Birkett, a fitter and part-time piano player, and Christina (nee Short), she was the fifth daughter of six children. She learned to read early, which led to her being paid a penny to read the paper to neighbours unable to do so themselves. She enjoyed books of all kinds into old age.
After leaving Cottesmore school in 1938, Madge worked as a secretary in the almoner’s office at Nottingham City hospital until 1943, when during the second world war she was called up into the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, training at RAF College Cranwell in Lincolnshire. Then she was posted to RAF Chicksands in Bedfordshire and then RAF Chivenor in Devon, where her duties included listening to and collating messages from Atlantic ships and forwarding them on to Bletchley Park for decoding.
It was at Chivenor that Madge met her future husband, Geoffrey Gregory, a flight sergeant, and where she suffered serious head injuries when she was knocked off her bike by an RAF fire engine shortly before VE Day, which meant she knew nothing of the war in Europe’s closing days.
Following their marriage in 1946, Madge and Geoff lived in various RAF quarters. Eight years later Geoff was posted to Kenya, where for 18 months the couple and their three small children lived on the RAF Eastleigh base just outside Nairobi. Madge enjoyed the scenery and wildlife, and started a Brownie pack. She was involved with the Brownies for the next 30 years, including in Singapore, the family’s next foreign posting, which lasted just under three years from 1959.
On their return to Britain in 1962, Madge and Geoff settled in Melksham, Wiltshire, where Madge continued to juggle the demands of a growing family – her youngest daughter was born soon after – with sewing, knitting, writing interesting letters to family and friends, and an increasing amount of voluntary work.
As well as the Brownies, she was involved with the Townswomen’s Guild, the weekly lunch club at Melksham Riverside centre and the WRVS (now Royal Voluntary Service), where she helped to organise meals on wheels and earned a long service medal with bar.
Madge was widowed in 1977, but continued with her voluntary work and took up new interests such as country dancing. She travelled as far as Canada and Alaska before infirmity brought an end to her adventures. For the last 12 years of her life she lived happily at Mavern House care home in the village of Shaw near Melksham, and took great delight in hearing about the lives of her four children, Janet, Joy, Roy and Philippa, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren, who all survive her.
