History detectives trace the family of Great War diarist

Teenaged villager served in Women’s RAF

A national lottery project has succeeded in tracing the family of a girl from Wye who kept a scapbook detailing the progress of the First World War.

The Finding Ella Harling project involved pupils from Wye School and members of the community.

The scrapbook-cum-diary, which starts just before Christmas 1914 and runs up to March 1919, consists of newspaper clippings and headlines from newspapers and is now kept at the Imperial War Museum.

Ella included her name and address, Ella Gertrude Harling, 3 Church Street, on the cover of the eight volumes.

With help from the Wye Historical Society, Wye School pupils discovered that Ella was one of five siblings and the daughter of a police sergeant.

Photographs of Ella were available from the society’s archive, and were taken because she volunteered to work for the Wom- en’s RAF as a sailmaker, repairing fabric on planes that flew from Bramble Lane Aerodrome in Wye.

Research by villager Delia Copland led to contact with Ella’s descendent John Harling, who lives in Chartham.

Mr Harling said: “My aunt told me about the diary before she died, but I assumed it had been lost.

“We didn’t realise it was in the Imperial War Museum.”

The family provided further details on Ella’s life, stating that she married twice, lived in Willesborough, and died in 1993 at Sevington Mill residential home.

Her son died last year, and his widow is still alive and lives in Willesborough.

The project, part of the National Lottery’s World War One: Then and Now programme, has involved poetry sessions at Brambles Care Home in Wye and a model wing-making project at WoodnWare CIC in Ashford inspired by the diaries.

An exhibition about the project in the run-up to Armistice Day can be seen at Wye Station’s waiting room between 9am and noon today (Thursday) and between 10am and noon at the Wye Heritage Centre on Saturday November 5.

The team behind the project are still keen to know more about Ella, in particular finding out whether she worked after the conflict, and what she did during the Second World War.

For more information, search Finding Ella Harling on Facebook

Picture: Wye Historical Society. Ella Harling in uniform during the First World War