It’s my Grandma’s funeral tomorrow. She was 96 and died of natural causes last month. Sadly most of our family can’t attend because of the lockdown. 

Women like her don’t get obituaries so I thought I’d write something based on an interview I did with her before she died

Sheilagh Clayton was born in Essex in 1923 to an Irish car mechanic and an English nanny. 
As a child she said she was arrogant and romantic. She seemed to spend much of her youth mimicking her dad's Irish accent and chasing boys - especially one boy called Jack Lillistone

One day she decided to scrawl ‘I love Jack Lillistone’ on the front of her house. Sadly it was unrequited, so she asked her dad to paint over it. He did paint, but carefully left the daubings for all to see. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken the piss out of his Irish accent

Naturally rebellious, when war broke out at 15 she volunteered for the Air Raid Precautions as an auxiliary nurse. At 16 she learnt how to drive the ambulances. Based in Brentwood she would drive into East London after German raids during the Blitz.

She barely ever talked about this. In her interview she simply said that she remembered it vividly, the bodies lined up in the streets, but offered no more.

In 1942 she joined the RAF - and worked on radar - helping to guide allied pilots to German planes. 


She was on duty during the disastrous ‘Exercise Tiger’ - a training operation for D-Day off Slapton Sands in Devon. German U-boats got in amongst American ships.

She said, “I remember I could hear this pilot, and he was crying and just saying ‘It’s awful, it’s awful. It’s absolute slaughter'”. 

Hundreds of men - mainly Americans - were killed. It was covered up for years.

During D-Day she was ‘in charge of the watch’ in the radar operations room at RAF Hope Cove in South Devon. She appeared to have a talent for working out quickly from a wave form the height of an enemy plane.

I asked her if she ever thought of the German pilots she was helping to kill. 

“By then I had seen a lot of death”, she said. “I didn’t give it a moment's thought”.

She wasn’t to know it, but when the war ended at 21 she would live for another 75 years. None would be anything like what she experienced in her years transitioning from child to adulthood in the war.

She married, had two kids and travelled a lot. She was one of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met. Last year she gave a speech at my wedding.

I asked her whether she had any regrets in her life. 

“No,” she said. “Ok, I wish I was born beautiful.”

Her advice on life:

 “Just live your life the way you want to live it. And don't be bossed about by anybody else.”

Even on her death bed Sheilagh’s mind was incredibly sharp. 

A few days before she died my sister Informed her that I’d got a new job at the BBC.

 “The BBC has gone to the dogs”, she said. I think she was joking.

 She will be be sorely, sorely missed.