Edna Storr

In 2005, her ambition was realised when the Queen unveiled a £1m bronze memorial close to the Whitehall Cenotaph in London.

Mrs Storr, known as “Smudge” to her war-time colleagues, was 17 years old when she volunteered to join the Army in 1940, her hope to drive lorries. She found herself, instead, training to be a height finder on anti-aircraft gun sights.

With her training completed, she joined 460 Heavy Ack Ack Battery, Royal Artillery Regiment, and was moved from battery to battery around the country in the defence of major targets from German air raids, and these included Coventry and London during the Blitz.

From Selby, Mrs Storr was one of the 55,000 women who served during the war years with anti-aircraft batteries. Altogether, 640,000 women served in the armed forces. Seven million more served in the Land Army while others flew aircraft from airbase to airbase to replenish aircraft lost or damaged in action. Women also worked as code breakers and served behind enemy lines and as air raid wardens. They worked in munitions factories, as ambulance drivers and the Women’s Voluntary Service.

Some 50 years after the War, Mrs Storr and former Army gunner Mildred Veal, of Clifton, York, helped by Major David Robertson, of Imphal Barracks, York, started a campaign to erect a memorial, because she believed the important contribution that all women made to the war effort was missing.

The idea for such a memorial was at first modest, envisaging a plaque in York Minster, but in the late 1990s, with the support of the press, the former Speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd, two local MPs and Dame Vera Lynn, it became more ambitious, and fundraising began in earnest for a national memorial.

Eventually the charity set up for the purpose raised £1m for the Whitehall bronze.

Towards the end of her life, Mrs Storr was mentioned several times during debates in the House of Commons on the issue of recognising the women who had helped defend Britain, and following the memorial’s unveiling, she was invited to meet the Queen.