After the Munich crisis of 1938, my mother, Marjorie Sayer, who has died aged 99, realised that war was inevitable.
For the next year she spent all of her spare time training in first aid and driving. When the second world war did break out in 1939 she joined the Auxiliary Ambulance Service and was stationed in Bloomsbury, central London, and then in Hammersmith.
The first year was, she recalled, great fun: learning how to do various jobs and making friends. But in the winter of 1940 the reality of the blitz broke over them. While many people found their way to shelters, where they would sing songs to boost morale and comfort each other, civil defence personnel were outside among the falling bombs, shrapnel and collapsing buildings.
On their first night of action a bomb destroyed two ambulances belonging to Marjorie’s station, killing four women. The others, when they heard the news, looked at each other and wondered if they would survive the war.
Marjorie met her future husband, Harry Sayer, an auxiliary fireman, when more bombs started to fall. They both ran for the same shelter and bashed their helmets together. This “tin-hat moment” became a family joke, but beneath the laughter, the terror of that time was not forgotten. They married on D-day in 1944.
After the blitz eased off there was still the ordinary work of the ambulance service. Marjorie was appalled at the violence that bored young men could inflict upon each other, something that went unpublicised.
She was born Marjorie van Diggele to Ellen (nee Hazel), a housekeeper, and her husband, a Dutch seaman. After she left school, Marjorie trained as a seamstress, working in a West End fashion house.
After the war she and Harry lived in Acton, west London, and started a family. Marjorie bcame the well-loved Brown Owl of the 3rd Acton Brownies for more than 20 years. She also enjoyed dressmaking, quilting, gardening and the arts, particularly music and the theatre, and always kept pets.
In 1979, when Harry retired, they moved to Burpengary, Queensland, Australia, to be near their daughters.
Harry died in 1999. Marjorie is survived by her three children, Jane, Charlotte and me, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
