A bungalow no more

There is a bungalow I walk past most mornings.  There lived an elderly woman, grey come white hair, she used a walking stick and always had a beret on her head, with thick rimmed NHS glasses.  Growing up I'd see her every once in a while when walking past.  She was a bit odd, loud in voice and I knew her to also be a catholic.  That however is the extent of my knowledge.  The beret suggested there was some kind of french connection, she was frail and a few years back disappeared.  I thought at the time she probably went into a nursing home.  The bungalow is a beautiful house and takes up quite a bit of land, this old woman and this bungalow were in my mind like cheese and toast.  They belonged.  Now as I walk past the bungalow I see it being torn down brick by brick by a couple of workmen and can't help feeling a little sad.  Sad because it was a beautiful house and needed to be lived in, and a memory of the old girl who lived there also gone

I bumped into someone I know who lives opposite the bungalow and he went on to say how awful it was the building was being pulled down.  At one point a petition had even been got by residents of the road and had somehow managed to stop it from being demolished.  He had tried again but this time some years later the residents were different.  Of different cultures and didn't want to sign their name to a petition.  He told me the garden had foundations for chains which were used on barrage balloons during the second world war.  In his mind the bungalow was also a historic site.  It was now going to come down and three houses built in it's place.  I then asked him about the old girl who lived there.

He agreed with my first impressions.  She was loud.  I'm not sure I may have spoken to her once now I think about it.  He said she had been a second world war heroine.  I could hardly believe this and asked for her name.  It was Yvonne Halsey.  She died in 2006 at the age of 90.  She had been a telephone operator in France when the war began.  Then escaped on the last ship sailing.  Unfortunately for her the ship was torpedoed but she survived and was picked up by another boat heading to England.  Yvonne had been bought up in England but her parents who also spoke french sent her to Europe as she was growing up.  Her french was fluent and as well she had learning several other languages.  When she returned to London she was approached by Charles de Gaule and asked to become a spy.  She would drop in by parachute into France and gather information on and from the french resistance.  She went back to France on 7 occasions.  The last of which she was caught by the Nazi's and tortured.  Her legs badly harmed.  Somehow she was rescued by the resistance and escaped back to England.  And this was a woman who I did not know, who lived a couple of roads away from me. 

So now I can't help feeling a little sad, for not knowing her a little better.