Revealed ... last resting place of tragic NI Wren Annie Mary Bell

The mystery of sailor Annie Mary Bell’s final resting place has been solved — at long last. Former seaman Mark Jenkinson and I have been searching for three years to discover where the Leading Wren from Northern Ireland, who was killed in a road accident in 1975 while home on leave from Naval Training Ship HMS Raleigh, is buried.

No last resting place could be found in cemeteries in Belfast, or elsewhere in her native province.

And we found this baffling, along with several of her old friends.

We can tell you now that 21-yearold Annie’s grave is at a cemetery in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester.

“It seems her funeral was held there on September 4,

1975, for family reasons,” says Mark Jenkinson.

We’ve discovered that Annie’s family moved away from Belfast a few years before her tragic demise.

Annie was a passenger in a car involved in a crash while she was on leave, but nobody can recall where the crash that killed her happened — although it was somewhere in Northern Ireland.

Ex-seaman Mark (61), who spent 16 years in the Royal Navy and is now in business in Sweden, has been trying in vain to find out more about Annie, who is in a Wren Book of Remembrance on display in St Mary’s Church on The Strand in London.

“She simply disappeared from the records — until now,” he explains. “For years, it wasn’t known where this young woman was buried.

“Even her close friends were astounded at the way she appeared to have vanished.”

For some reason no photographs of Annie can be turned up at HMS Raleigh, and the record books at HMS Caroline, the former training ship based in Belfast, couldn’t shed any light on Annie, either.

“The records of Wrens who lost their lives in wartime service have been well detailed,” adds Mark, who also served in the Royal Naval Reserve. “But it appears that peacetime women, like Annie, who died prematurely in uniform, have been ignored to some extent.

“Friends of mine in Manchester are now going to visit her grave to pay homage to Annie and perhaps find out more about her family.”