The picture of the Women’s Section of the Royal British Legion celebrating a special anniversary, which was featured in a Ross Gazette Rewind last week, certainly brought back many memories for Wendy Cole.

Mrs Cole is in the picture, far left. At the time she was Treasurer of the Women’s Section.

She was a long-serving committee member and can remember what a successful group they were. She said: “We were quite a small section but we raised a great deal of money for the Royal British Legion.” She said: “We were a great team, we all worked together and no-one took expenses, we had really enjoyable meetings with interesting speakers, who did not charge anything so all our money could go to the Legion.”

She added: “We worked very hard but we had fun as well.”

The 75th anniversary was a very special occasion, Wendy held a prize bingo night to raise the funds to pay for the celebration. The service was held at Weston Under Penyard Church and they hired the Village Hall, at a reduced price, which they decorated. There was more than 100 people at the service, then everyone enjoyed refreshments in the hall where they were entertained by the Dean Singers. Mrs Jean Hayward made the cake and Mrs Cole remembers that her two young grandsons took the collection in the church.

Mrs Cole can identify most of the people in the picture, they were from left to right, Wendy Cole, Gwyneth Minton, Chairperson and Standard Bearer, Pat Wright from the County RBL and two other guests, then Rosemary Ceci, Secretary and Mrs Cresswell, who cut the cake as she was the oldest member.