Sadly since my first article last month about Gertrude looking forward to celebrate her 100th Birthday Gertrude passed away peacefully at Crabwall Care Home. Gwen Knight, Beryl & I were with her. The service of Celebration for her life took place at St James’ Christleton on Friday 8th March. In recognition of her great life, the Daily Telegraph published her obituary, and her story was later told on BBC Radio 4. What I propose to do to complete my tribute is to tell the remainder of her story in March & April on our website. I hope you enjoy reading about her incredible life.

Her Story continues. The war over, the British Army moved on to different responsibilities, and she found work as a secretary, first for an American film Company, Metro Goldwin Meyer, and then German Railways. This job enabled her to travel, and she did so almost always as a lone traveller. She also won a scholarship to study languages at Grenoble University. It was in the French alps near the university, that she learned to ski.

In 1950 Gertrude travelled to London with a girl friend and somehow met up with many old army friends, including the officers of the armoured division of Royal Scots Greys. (The no1 Royal Tank Regiment had by this stage amalgamated with the Scots Greys). It was here that Arthur Wright, that same officer from Luneborg said “you are not going to escape from me again my girl”. Seven years later they were married at Richmond in Yorkshire, near Catterick Camp, where Arthur was stationed. Arthur was right at the top of his career, Warrant Officer II, Regimental Quarter Master Sergeant (T) of the Royal Scots Greys. It was here that Gertude obtained her British citizenship and became an army wife. Together they did several tours of duty in Europe and were able to visit family and friends in Germany. Arthur as Montgomery’s personal bodyguard from El Alamein through Libya, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy and then Northern Europe was allowed to help control, deer, boar and other wild animals for German farmers. Gertrude as an officer’s wife, lived well, and met our late Queen Elizabeth on two special ceremonies in the life of the Royal Scots Greys, at Catterick Camp and Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.

In 1962 they moved to Chester, as Arthur had now retired and become a civil servant, who was given the task of de - commissioning Chester Castle as an Army Headquarters. Gertrude had obtained Teaching Qualifications at Liverpool University, and taken up the post of Language Teacher at West Kirby Grammar School. She was revered there, and I know from letters and cards how much she influenced the students, especially her planning exciting exchange visits to Europe.

It was in 1977, that her life fell apart, when Arthur died suddenly of a massive heart attack. She was devastated. They had set up home in Home Close in Christleton, with a well stocked garden full of high quality fruit trees and bushes, with lovely neighbours. She had an excellent teaching post, a church to worship in, and the wonderful Cheshire countryside to cycle and enjoy.

She says, “I thought my world had ended” as we had planned to travel to far off lands together after his retirement. “There was no hope or laughter left in the world for me”. It was her commitment to the students at West Kirby and the support of the staff, that got her through those first empty months. By the summer of 1978, she was faced with the long summer holiday, and it was with Mrs Dorothy Beasley the Headmistress of the school, that she started her new adventurous life.

Gertrude had always enjoyed travel; We know that she visited, Thailand, Burma, India, Bangladesh, Australia, Mexico, Libya, Egypt, Namibia, Italy, Greece, Israel and Palestine, and VSO had even nominated her as World Traveller of the Year in 1985. It was in the summer of 1979 however that her life changed for ever. She was on a trek through the mountains of northern Kashmir, when she came across a bare plateaux with a castle on a hill, and a bleak and treeless landscape near the River Indus. She had reached the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh, and the town of Leh.

She immediately fell in love with the place, and when she saw the need for a school, she determined to retire early from teaching at West Kirby, and go back and teach at Leh the following summer. Many of the ragged children she saw were refugees from Tibet, and the first school she helped to develop was at Shey. Gertrude named it St James’ School after her village church at Christleton, near Chester. A school building with such primitive conditions, the children sitting on the floor, no glass windows, no running water and little sanitation. She said “People thought I was mad, but what they didn’t see was the peace and vastness of the mountains, the huge and endless sky, and the excitement and love shining in the children’s big black eyes”. She said that she always thought of Arthur being with me. But “it is ironic to think that if he hadn’t died, my new exciting life with these wonderful children wouldn’t have even started”.

To be continued.