Man produces poem honouring heroic Wigan borough war entertainer

Flora Macdonald Whittaker, from Butts Basin, Leigh, was still a teenager forging a career on the London boards when she joined the armed forces entertainment services.

However, the role would end up being more life-changing than she could possibly have imagined as her work raising morale among the front-line troops also included visiting a camp where she saw survivors of the Nazi regime’s inhuman Final Solution after they had been liberated by the Allies.

She returned to civilian life after the war and told her family and friends almost nothing of what she had been through.

However, her memories of that horrific episode in history were preserved in the final years of her life as she shared her story with Andy Strowman, her neighbour in Harpenden in Hertfordshire.

In audio recordings which Mr Strowman made Flora recounted how, aged just 17, she joined the army entertainment service after recruiters came to the theatre where she was taking part in a musical.

Mr Strowman said she told him that she should really have been 18 to join the service but when she volunteered the man from armed forces entertainment said that as she would soon be 18 that would be close enough.

Her trip to the continent would bring her face to face with the horrendous attempt to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.

Flora told Mr Strowman she believed she was taken to a concentration camp in Germany, although the military would not tell her exactly what it was or what it was called.

He has now dedicated a poem to Flora and all who served to help others in times of war and aftermath:

I know the ordinary man and woman,

Who gave me a chance,

To have a brew and a cake ,

To be allowed to count my life in buttons.

Without them I could not do that.

Thank you black and white,

Soldiers and sailors ,

Air Force and medical crew,

And Ensa .

The ones behind the scenes

And the cleaners.

An obituary notice said Flora died aged 87 in 2015 in Lincoln County Hospital and her husband Leonard had already died.

She was described as being a mum to her daughter Kay, mother-in-law to Colin and grandma to Stephanie.