At just 17 years of age, my mother, Valerie Livingstone of Bachuil (née Collins 1926-2025), enlisted as a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) in 1943, part of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British covert intelligence unit tasked with resisting the Germans through espionage.
FANY, also known as Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps, was the first quasi-military organisation that specifically trained women for active service. It was established in 1907 and was active in nursing and intelligence work during both world wars.
FANY personnel served as wireless operators, coding and decoding specialists and radar operators, engaging in top-secret, highly skilled work. As volunteers they covered their own expenses for uniforms and first aid kits, so initially, only well-heeled women joined.
Following World War I, some suggested merging FANYs with ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service – Women volunteers), which Princess Elizabeth joined. However, many FANY members refused integration as maintaining their independence was of paramount importance. So they became known as the ‘Free FANYs’, making them well-suited for working with the SOE.
The FANYs operated in several theatres, including North Africa, Italy, India and the Far East. Notable members like Violette Szabo and Noor Inayat Khan were posthumously awarded the George Cross for their courage.
Upon joining the war, every FANY underwent intensive training, to include driving, mechanics, first aid and anti-gas drills. With smart uniforms, they were considered on par with guards’ regiments.
Initially, the FANY was considered elitist, enlisting daughters of the land-owning classes. However, the organisation developed, welcoming girls from diverse backgrounds − yet, they required young women, from reliable families, who could “keep their mouths shut”. Nobody could know their jobs or living arrangements, having signed the Official Secrets Act.
She could efficiently mend anything from a carriage clock to a dishwasher or lawnmower − skills learnt during her military training
The organisation specifically sought girls with the right brains for dealing with codes and cyphers. During training, potential radio operators lived in cold Nissen huts, working six-hour shifts around the clock. Each girl was assigned her own agent to learn their unique Morse key touch, or “fist”, as it was known. Messages, sent in code, were often based on poems and then transposed.
Valerie was attracted to the FANY for its unique reputation and diverse roles. So, at the age of 17, she left Norfolk, following her five older sisters into the war.
She initially trained at Fawley Court, Oxfordshire, with further training at Belhaven, Scotland. Fawley Court was where new recruits specialised in becoming wireless operators. Here she learned the Morse code, coding and other essential skills, specialising in portable wireless operations, and worked with agents who were being prepared for deployment in occupied territories.
After her training, she and her colleagues were immediately involved in covert operations, working with the cloak and dagger brigades in highly confidential missions.
She was told they would be heading overseas on a troop ship. Not knowing the destination, she deduced they were heading for India, spotting packing cases marked ‘Calcutta’ at Glasgow dockside.
Once in Calcutta, Valerie became a critical radio operator in the Codes and Cyphers division for the Calcutta Section where her training allowed her to detect enemy agents “fist” in sending Morse code messages and send back misinformation to sabotage the enemy.
It was a great surprise and source of pride for our family to learn at her funeral last February that she had been awarded the prestigious Legion d’Honneur.The promise of Valerie’s service came with war risks that she and many young women took on eagerly, having to learn new coping behaviours and skills previously unavailable to them in the male-dominated world.
She was tough, independent, resilient, determined, self-sufficient and capable, adapting to new skills and experiences. She could efficiently mend anything from a carriage clock to a dishwasher or lawnmower − skills learnt during her military training.
She certainly maintained high standards and was skilled in bridge, Mahjong and completed the Times crossword daily. She remained youthful into her early 90s, embracing new technology – e-mail, WhatsApp, etc.
Born into a tight-knit family community with five sisters, Valerie embodied the silent generation’s values of respect and morality.
After Victory in Europe Day (VE) Day, 80 years ago, en route home, Valerie was billeted at Luqa Barracks. She vividly reminisced about walking from Luqa to Valletta one cold day in January 1946, seeing children without shoes among the rubble with chilblains on their feet. The stark contrast between poverty from the devastating war in Malta and the opulence of Church interiors deeply impacted her.
My mother regularly visited Malta from 2008 to 2020, staying in Mabel Strickland’s Villa Parisio with my husband, Robert, and me. This was after my father had died.
My mother had met and married my father in just three weeks, in 1952, after a whirlwind romance. They then lived 15 years in the Middle East, finally retiring to the Livingstone family home on the Isle of Lismore, Scotland.
Like many other veterans, my mother downplayed her wartime service and achievements. So it was a great surprise and source of pride for our family to learn at her funeral, this past February, that she had been awarded the prestigious Legion d’Honneur, recognising her “military engagement and steadfast involvement in the Liberation of France during World War II”. “We owe our freedom and security to your dedication, because you were ready to risk your life.”
Valerie was born on June 6, 1926, and passed away on February 25, 2025. She is survived by her five children: Niall, myself, Catriona, Morag Mellor and Sandy, as well as her five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
She lived an amazing life, like so many others of her generation, who were incredibly brave and selfless, deserving our honour and admiration for their work – jobs few women could have imagined doing just a generation earlier.
Let us never forget them.
For more history on the FANYs, visit www.fany.org.uk.
Deirdre Nyasa Rolfe Hornyold-Strickland