Portland gran receives wartime Service Medal 65 years on (From Dorset Echo)
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Portland gran receives wartime Service Medal 65 years on
11:00am Wednesday 17th March 2010 in Local News By Arron Hendy
Elsie Dewland with her Service Medal and old paybook
A GRANDMOTHER aged 93 has received her wartime Service Medal 65 years after leaving the Army.
Elsie Dewland, from Mantle Close, Portland, was an Army cook during the Second World War but has just received the honour.
Elsie was part of a team that fed 250 ack-ack anti-aircraft gun operators defending Britain in places including Plymouth, Cardiff, Milford Haven and Taunton.
She went on to cook for recovering soldiers at Hamilton in Scotland at the end of the war before settling back at home in Dorset.
She was sent the Service Medal and her HM Armed Forces Veteran’s Badge after her friend Gordon Black realised she should have them.
She said: “I feel proud. I didn’t know I qualified but I had to send off my service and pay book and tell them when I joined.”
Elsie, nee Larcombe, was born in Broadwey and still remembers catching the train at Upwey Station on August 3, 1942 to go to Dorchester and join the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
She went for training before joining the ack–ack gun operators and she remembers her time with them fondly.
She said: “We were all there together so it was like a big family and you knew everybody.
“At dinner time you would just get the dinner out to go into the dining room and the siren would go off.
“Back would go the food into the cook house until it was over.”
Her Army life signalled a big change from working at IJ Brown’s opticians in St Thomas Street, Weymouth.
After the war Elsie settled in Chiswell with her husband, Portlander Albert Dewland.
Bert worked at Craven’s Garage in Victoria Square for 38 years. They had two children, Maureen, now 62, and Michael, 56. Bert died aged 72.
The couple became sweethearts before the war after meeting on Weymouth seafront while out with their friends.
During the war Bert worked around the world as a mechanic on naval transports but they managed to get time off together to get married on November 22, 1944.
