On Remembrance Sunday people gather around the war memorial in front of our church to hear the names of the fallen read aloud. There are twenty names inscribed on the memorial – all men who lost their lives in the First World War – but twenty-one names are recited, including that of Patricia Dora Adam, a Second World War casualty.
As the only casualty actually buried in Ayot St Peter, Patricia is the sole entry on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission list. We occasionally get visitors looking for this “war grave”, expecting to see the familiar standard white headstone, but none exists.
Patricia died of meningitis on 3 February 1940 at hospital in Northamptonshire, aged just 21. She was serving in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (“ATS”), an organisation formed just before the Second World War to employ women in a range of roles. In the early years of the war most ATS members worked as cooks, clerks and storekeepers, but their roles became increasingly sophisticated and technical as time went on, and some women served in France. When the ATS was eventually disbanded in 1949 the remaining members were transferred to the newly-formed Women’s Royal Army Corps.
In December 1941, Parliament passed the National Service Act, which called up unmarried women between 20 and 30 years old to join one of the auxiliary services, including the ATS. Patricia had joined before service was compulsory and was volunteer W20882 in the Northamptonshire ATS.
Patricia’s sister Joan Walker lived in Ayot St Peter during the war, as her husband was employed by de Havilland in Hatfield. The Walkers had a baby boy who died a few hours after birth, and was buried in our churchyard in 1939. Patricia’s ashes were added to the grave in late February 1940, and this became a family plot. Patrica and Joan’s mother was buried there in 1950 and Joan’s daughter in 2016. The grave is on the south side of the churchyard, next to the side wall of the vestry.