New Malden great-grandmother a year older than Armistice Day (From This Is Local London)

New Malden great-grandmother a year older than Armistice Day

4:15pm Wednesday 12th November 2008 in Where I Live By David Lindsell

Every year when the nation remembers the end of Europe’s most bloody war, Winnie Hennings marks time in her own way.

She was born one year to the day before the Allies and Germans met in a railway carriage to cease hostilities on the Western Front, which has ever since been commemorated by hundreds of millions as Armistice Day.

Mrs Hennings was born in a small family home in Acre Road on November 11 in 1917 to Maria Alice Dovey and Frank Herbie Bradford.

She married her husband Leonard on December 31, 1939 after meeting him at Sainsburys where he was a butcher and she was a butter girl.

Within months he was posted to Egypt with the Medical Corps and they were apart while she went on to work at Hawkers in Canbury Park Gardens in Kingston doing filing.

On V-Day she said: “We felt relieved to think we would get my husband back. It spoiled six years of my life because he was called up nine weeks after we were married.”

She said: “It is still hard to believe I have lived through all this time and experienced all of this. I have had a very happy life and I’m still going to enjoy a lot more.

“I have the services on TV and I also recognise the war and that I am part of it. I feel it is very important that the young people know what it is about.”

Mrs Hennings has three children, six grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. She was 91 yesterday and celebrated at her New Malden home. She usually commemorates the day by buying a poppy and attending a ceremony in Surbiton with the RNLI.

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