Margot Marshall, as she then was, was a 26-year-old subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) when, at the beginning of June 1944, she was summoned to a secret meeting at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, where she and her colleagues were briefed about plans for D-Day by Montgomery.
She was appointed Officer in Charge of an advance party of 30 members of 1st Continental Group ATS and at the end of July her party crossed the Channel in secret in a tank carrier, landing on the beach at Courseilles and camping among the ruins of Bayeux, close to the front line. The rest of 1st Continental Group, consisting of three companies – cooks, drivers, and Margot Marshall's E Company of clerks – arrived about a month later.
In September 1944 the whole camp moved from Normandy to Brussels, where they were given a heroes' welcome. Margot Marshall was billeted in a building in Avenue Louise which only days earlier had been the Gestapo HQ.
In the spring of 1945 senior Allied and Nazi officers met to address the worsening problem of food shortages in the northern Netherlands. A temporary truce was agreed and subsequently Margot Marshall was posted to 3rd Continental Group ATS, Netherlands District, as junior commander. She formed K Company to secure food supplies for the starving Dutch people.
Though she had an excellent driver, travelling around was risky, and on one occasion she found herself dangling over a river where a bridge had been blown up. After hearing of her near miss, General Alexander Galloway offered her the use of his private plane. She visited Belsen after the camp was liberated, and found some consolation in being able to deliver a letter from a boy in the camp hospital to his family, whom she tracked down in Rotterdam. They had long since given him up for dead.
In the run-up to Potsdam, Margot Marshall was instructed to form a temporary company to look after the British delegation at the conference. After selecting some 140 ATS volunteers, she flew to Berlin and remained at Potsdam for five weeks. During this time she attended the Berlin Victory Parade, at which she and colleagues were given a box next to Churchill's. She was demobilised in April 1946.
Professor Frank Fenner
Microbiologist who helped suppress a rabbit plague and also led the eradication of smallpox
One of five children, Frank Fenner was born at Ballarat, Victoria, on December 21 1914. His family moved to Rose Park in South Australia when he was two. His father, a teacher, encouraged his son's interest in science and as a boy Frank had an impressive fossil collection. He wanted to study Geology, but his father urged him to study Medicine, arguing that it would lead to better job opportunities. Fenner went on to study Medicine at the University of Adelaide before enlisting in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps in 1940.
In the early part of the war Fenner was stationed in Palestine as a field doctor. Before enlisting, he had taken a diploma in tropical medicine, so when malaria became a significant problem among troops returning from the Syrian campaign, he was one of the few with some experience.
In 1942-43, when he was in New Guinea, casualty rates due to the disease were so high that the Australian War Cabinet feared it would not be able to send adequate reinforcements to maintain fighting strength against the Japanese. Fenner's success in reducing the casualty rate meant that he was given part of the credit for Australia's subsequent victory. He was appointed MBE for this work.
'Бій відлунав. Жовто-сині знамена затріпотіли на станції знов'
