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Marie Yvonne Chisholm Douglas
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Marie Yvonne Chisholm Thomas, born Douglas, (6 April
1925 - 14 August 2016) was a Wren and Cold War reservist
Marie Thomas, who has died aged 91, was
a wartime Wren turned journalist who later spent decades of her time in
a blast-proof underground bunker as part of the country's little-known
defence against Cold War nuclear attack.
Curiosity over a
mysterious subterranean chamber near her home, into which uniformed
figures disappeared then re-emerged from time to time, led her to join
the Royal Observer Corps in the early 1970s. The ROC was a uniformed
organisation of civilian volunteers who worked in a network of group
headquarters and underground posts which maintained a high level of
readiness.
Mrs Thomas joined No 24 Group HQ at RAF Turnhouse,
near Edinburgh, where she plotted potential bomb blasts and radioactive
fallout, linked to air raid sirens on police boxes, in the event of war
breaking out with the Soviet Union. Her service with the ROC covered a
period of considerable worldwide geopolitical change and increasing
tension, and ended after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Ronald
Reagan's election as US president in 1980, subsequent increases in
defence spending from the Pentagon, the Soviet shooting down of Korean
Airlines flight 007, deployment of Pershing II nuclear missiles in
Europe and "evil empire" rhetoric exchanged between east and west
combined to create a climate of fear and mistrust. Set against this
background, the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation
(UKWMO) maintained the ROC as its field force.
At the core of the
ROC was its 10,500 volunteers, who trained at more than 1,500
underground posts and 25 group HQs across the UK. These men and women,
aged from 16 to 65 and numbering many Second World War veterans like Mrs
Thomas, were unarmed and paid only travelling expenses. But ROC
personnel, whose motto was Forewarned is Forearmed and whose cap badge
featured an Elizabethan firelighter, were a close-knit bunch who prided
themselves on their professionalism and knowledge.
The Home
Office funded the ROC but it was administered by the Ministry of
Defence, which provided RAF-style uniforms, denoting the Corps's Second
World War origins and role of tracking and reporting enemy aircraft
approaching Britain. By the mid-1960s, advances in radar technology
meant aircraft related roles were withdrawn and the ROC became UKWMO's
eyes and ears in nuclear defence until the end of the Cold War and its
disbandment in the early 1990s.
Every Wednesday evening, after
feeding her children and checking their homework, she would put on
battle dress and drive to Turnhouse to join her crew, where her wit and
pithy observations were welcome in an atmosphere where most could
potentially end up the sole survivors of their families.
She
served with the ROC until retiring in 1990, with the imminent collapse
of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War. As a combined farewell and
birthday present, she was invited to join the 12-man crew of an RAF
Nimrod for a night patrol over the Atlantic. She later wrote of "an
encounter with a Russian 'Bear', the vast four-engined equivalent of our
Nimrod. These Soviet planes patrol the same huge areas as NATO aircraft,
but there is a feeling that the spirit of glasnost may have begun to
take over from the previous sinister shadowing."
Marie Yvonne
Chisholm Douglas was born in Kilmarnock, the daughter of a naval
draughtsman in the Clyde shipyards. Her name was put down for Kilmarnock
Academy at birth by her parents, whose faith in the school was reflected
by the two Nobel laureates it produced, Lord John Boyd Orr and Sir
Alexander Fleming. She started at the junior school at five, passed the
qualifying exam at 12 then moved to the senior school in 1937, where she
was to edit the school magazine, the Gold Berry.
Mrs Thomas
worked as a secretary after leaving school before being taken on as a
trainee journalist with the then Glasgow Herald, becoming one of the
very few women in journalism. Living in freezing digs in Charing Cross,
she worked in features on the women's page and wrote frugal recipes, as
rationing and food shortages took a grip. Her call-up had been deferred
due to her contribution to the war effort, but in 1945 she joined the
Women's Royal Naval Service as a volunteer. While serving in Ayrshire,
she met her husband Vivian, an RAF pilot.
Never having been away
from home, she found naval discipline a culture shock which better
suited girls from boarding schools. One fellow recruit asked her: "Do
you hunt?" Her language skills destined her to become a tactical
communicator in the Royal Navy signals branch. She was a leading coder,
dealing with signals up to Top Secret level at bases in Ayr - the
commandeered Butlins holiday camp re-named HMS Scotia - HMS Cochrane at
Rosyth and HMS Wildfire in Sheerness, from 1945 until demob in 1946.
In 1946 she joined the Ayrshire Post, becoming a senior reporter in
1949 and earning the top union rate of £7 a week. However, equality at
work was a long way off and a male colleague announced it was a "damned
disgrace that a young lassie like you earns that when I have a family to
keep". Mrs Thomas recalled later: "I should have just told him the truth
- that I was better than him."
She married in Dublin the same
year, where the lack of rationing made luxuries available, gave up her
career to be a housewife and moved with her husband to Swansea.
By the the 1960s the family had returned to Scotland, living first in
Edinburgh then Penicuik. With her children older, Mrs Thomas returned to
the workplace after a 30-year break, taking an administrative job at an
estate agent and finding the experience so liberating that she shaved 10
years off her age and joined a secretarial temping agency. Fast
shorthand placed her in demand with a variety of clients and she
particularly enjoyed her time at the Scottish Council for Research in
Education, where she was a prolific writer and sometimes poet for the
staff magazine, penning Chaucer-style prose. She also worked for the
then Scottish Office at Victoria Quay in Leith.
She still wrote
occasional features for national newspapers after finally retiring, and
spent long hours tracing her Douglas family tree. It was family
knowledge that an uncle had won the Military Medal in the Great War but
she unearthed distinguished ancestors who had served with Wellington in
the Peninsular War, or been leading lawyers, civic figures or successful
businessmen, leading to her wondering: "Where did all the money go?"
Travelling with her husband was one of her joys, initially in the UK
by car and latterly by train, often taking the Eurostar to Paris, where
they stayed at their favourite hotel. They took a round-the-world trip
as paying passengers on a merchant vessel, when she was able to put a
headstone on the Australian grave of her grandfather, a sea captain
under sail who died in his cabin aged 45, leaving his wife and children,
including her father, almost destitute. She never forgot her naval roots
and was a member of the World Ship Society and the Association of Wrens.
Mrs Thomas's husband died before her. She is survived by five sons
and four grandchildren.
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Sources
Sources for this article include:
• Her son, Campbell Douglas
Any contributions will be
gratefully accepted
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