FITTING TRIBUTE TO REMARKABLE ROSE
D-Day veteran, 107, gets hero send-off
ONE of Britain’s last surviving D-Day veterans has been given a hero’s send-off at her funeral.
An all-female RAF guard of honour lined up to pay their respects to Rose Davies, who served with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and died aged 107.
She took part in the Normandy landings as a radar operative on June 6, 1944.
She was in charge of a team on the Isle of Wight that helped lead the Allies across the Channel to France by monitoring the shipping.
Rose, of Shrewsbury, Shrops, joined the war effort because her then-fiance Wilf was stationed in the Middle East and she wanted to help bring him home sooner.
She told the RAF Benevolent Fund in 2021: “We had no idea what was going on. But we could feel something in the atmosphere, something important was going to happen.
“It was awe-inspiring, very exciting but sad too because you did not know how many of those boats and little ships were going to come back and that is a very sobering thought.
“It was exciting to think we were part of something that was so important.”
Mum-of-two Rose was later awarded the Legion d’Honneur, France’s top military honour, for her work during the Second World War.
She died at her home last month and was laid to rest on Monday at St Chad’s Church in Shrewsbury.
Rose’s granddaughter Abigail Davies said she had a “great positivity and a sense of adventure”.
Speaking about her D-Day heroics, Squadron leader Gary James from RAF Shawbury said: “There were so many ships that she could not see the sea between them.
“She knew that many brave young men would not be coming back home.”
The great-grandmother of four was also a Samaritan and vice-president of the Shropshire branch of the Royal Air Force Association.