23 APRIL 1942, Page 4

Most worthy to be linked here with the first subject

of the Crown is another of the King's subjects, two years older than the King's daughter, Nora Caveney, the first member of the A.T.S. to be killed in action. The story, as told in Tuesday's papers, sticks in the memory. • Russia, of course, is accustomed to the spectacle of women in posts of danger. Here, so far, it is less common, and this first fatality to an A.A. girl is of some historic note. Nora Caveney, we are ted, a Lancashire mill-girl, joined an A.A. battery on the South Coast. Last Friday an alert was sounded, and Private Caveney took her place at the predictor till she was struck down by a shell- splinter. Immediately (I quote from the Daily Express account) " Private Gladys Keel, a spotter, stepped forward and took over Nora Caveney's job. The other girls coolly carried on. There was not a moment's delay in passing directions for the guns." There is a place for Nora Caveney in British military history.

* *