First A.T.S. Member Killed on A.A. Command Gun Site : Nora Caveney A.T.S. :17th April 1942

Private Nora Caveney
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Tuesday 21 April 1942

Girl Killed at Gun Site.

The first A.T.S. in the A.A. command to be killed by enemy action at a gun site is Private Nora Caveney, aged 18, of Walsden, Todmorden, the War Office announces. Walsden is in the West Riding of Yorkshire. She was killed on April 17 by a bomb splinter as she stood at a predictor on a South Coast gun site during a raid.

She was following an enemy 'plane and was "on target" when she collapsed. Another A.A. girl, Private Gladys Keel, on duty as a spotter, took Nora's place at the predictor and continued to follow the raider, and the guns were able to continue firing without a moment's delay. Other A.T.S. girls on the predictor kept on with their jobs through the rest of the raid, which lasted nearly an hour. It was their first engagement with the enemy.

Nora left her job in a silk factory last December to join the A.T.S. and volunteered for A.A. duties. She joined one of the first mixed batteries to take over front line gun sites on the South Coast. "Every man and girl in the battery is out for revenge," said the battery's second-in-command. "The girls' discipline under fire is most praiseworthy. Seasoned soldiers could not have behaved better."
Daily Herald - Tuesday 21 April 1942

... Nora, tall and dark, lived with her parents and two older sisters at Co-operative-street, Walsden, near Rochdale, Lancs, until last December when she left her job in a silk factory to volunteer for A.A. duties in the ATS. She was posted to one of the first batteries to take over front line gun sites on the South Coast. In the early hours of last Friday the alarm sounded, and Nora and other ATS jumped out of bed, grabbed their tin hats and gas masks and ran to action stations.

A few minutes later they were in the thick of their first engagement with the enemy. As the guns, guided by the predictor girls, fired the second salvo, a bomb landed some distance away and flying splinters struck the sandbags topping the concrete wall of the predictor pit in which the girls were working. Private Nora Caveney was picked up by her commanding officer. The guns were still firing as a stretcher party took her back to camp.

"The girls' discipline under fire was most praiseworthy," said the battery's second-in-command last night. "The drill for the replacement of a casualty was carried out as perfectly if it had been a demonstration. Seasoned soldiers could not have behaved better."

Yesterday there was a military funeral in a South of England cemetery. Private Nora's parents and her sister Mary led the mourning column of men and girls from the gun site.
Pvt Nora Caveney (1923-1942) - Find A Grave...






PRIVATE Nora Caveney
Service Number: W/91467
Regiment & Unit/Ship
Auxiliary Territorial Service

Date of Death
Died 17 April 1942

Age 18 years old

Buried or commemorated at
NETLEY MILITARY CEMETERY

2210.

United Kingdom

• Secondary Unit, Regimentattd. 505 Bty., 148(M) H.A.A. Regt. Royal Artillery
• Country of ServiceUnited Kingdom
• Additional InfoDaughter of John and Hannah Caveney, of Walsden, Todmorden, Yorkshire.
• Personal InscriptionRESTING WHERE NO SHADOWS FALL

 

England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007
Name: Nora Caveney
Death Age: 18
Birth Date: abt 1924
Registration Date: Apr 1942
[May 1942]
[Jun 1942]
Registration Quarter: Apr-May-Jun
Registration District: Winchester
Inferred County: Hampshire
Volume: 2c
Page: 180