The Royal British Legion and genealogy firm Ancestry have donated a plaque to Letchworth to commemorate Irma Maria Schoepen, a munition worker who contributed enormously to the war effort.
The plaques – like the one in Broadway Gardens – recognise Britains’s contribution to the war effort on home soil, from factory munitionettes, to miners and Women’s Land Army.
BBC newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky visited Letchworth earlier this week to talk with Irma’s granddaughter Carol, and unveil the plaque where her grandmother worked as a munitionette and married her husband Georges.
Letchworth’s new plaque – along with two more which have been donated to Blaenavon in south Wales and Birmingham – was created by Sarah Arnett, the artist behind Royal British Legion’s ‘Thank You 100’ project.
Bringing together Ancestry’s military records, censuses and other collections from the wartime period, expert genealogists have painted a picture of the home front, commemorating the locations where more than two million people contributed to the war effort at home.
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