An Angus woman who was a heroine of the Blitz has reached the age of 100 just like her mother before her.
Brigadier Janet Fraser moved to Arbroath with her parents at the age of five before she trained to become a Salvation Army officer.
Her first appointment was at the Salvation Army’s Strawberry Field Children’s Home in Liverpool, which was immortalised in the Beatles song.
In 1939 she was transferred to a home for older people in London where she worked during the Blitz, when the city suffered from more than 70 major air raids across 37 days.
While the bombs dropped, she would provide entertainment in the shelters playing her concertina, leading singing and handing out food and drink.
“During one air raid a blast sent a large plate of glass window out on top of me, which landed me on the floor,” she said. “I said to myself ‘I am dead’ while lying there but realised I was very much alive and so went on my way to see the old folk.”
Janet now lives at Kendale Hall in Arbroath and said she has fond memories of her childhood home, an old cottage with no running water and an outside toilet and “no wall-to-wall carpets but wall-to-wall love.”
Janet’s father taught her to play the accordion and as a member of the Salvation Army accordion band she would march down the streets of 1920s Arbroath. Her mother was also a dedicated Salvationist and was awarded a British Empire Medal for her Christian service to the community in Arbroath.
Janet was presented with her birthday card from the Queen by Georgiana Osborne, Lord Lieutenant of Angus, and Angus Provost Helen Oswald.