D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Joyce Wilding

Joyce Wilding, Age 99, Special Operations Executive

Interviewed 20 October 2023

Volunteering to join the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), Joyce Wilding from Sussex then became a member of SOE - the secret organisation carrying out sabotage and subversion in occupied countries.

She manned transmitter huts at SOE’s Oxfordshire Thame Park training centre, receiving messages in Morse code from secret agents overseas. 

The agents carried out acts of sabotage that disrupted enemy movements in the run up tp D-Day and also gathered intelligence about troop movements that fed into Allied planning for Operation Overlord.

She said: "The agents were being taught to use Morse code on their wirelesses which was vital and we were in a hut on a hill where there were transmitters that had to be tuned whenever there was a skid which was something coming in from abroad.

"All the skids went through the transmitter hut to the signal office in Morse code and then decoded and eventually sent on to headquarters in London.

"In the morning it was purely training for the agents that were actually stationed at Thame Park.

Joyce Wilding manned transmitter huts at SOE’s Oxfordshire Thame Park training centre. Credit: ITV Meridian

"They had to learn to parachute, to be able to attack and kill and do all sorts of work. And they had terrible endings.

"They were working in the fields and the villages on their own, perhaps in sabotage or getting information on troop movements. We really didn’t know exactly what they were doing.

"I believe the information they got behind the lines was vital. It was an amazing time to live through in a way. 

"At my home there were a lot of Canadian soldiers which we had stationed. A whole lot in the fields. And they sadly all went to D-Day and to Sicily and of course really I am afraid to say there were very few you met afterwards.

"They really didn’t come home."

Later Mrs Wilding was a driver in London for SOE, picking up and delivering clothes, disguises and other supplies for agents.

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