12 November 2020
Woldingham’s history department led our annual Remembrance Assembly this year. With 2020 marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, Miss Noble and Miss Whitworth talked about women’s vital contribution to the war effort. They spoke about Joan Joslin, now 97, who worked as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, and Noor Inayat Khan, who gave her life as a British agent working in France as a wireless operator with the French resistance. Miss Noble and Miss Whitworth explained that by 1943 almost 90% of single British women and 80% of married women were involved in some sort of essential war work, from flying planes between military bases, to being part of the Land Army or volunteering at a local air raid shelter, and that the part women played led to a huge shift in perspectives on what women were capable of in wider society.
After the talk, the Woldingham community stood in silence to reflect and remember before the Last Post sounded.