A resident at a veterans’ care home in High Wycombe has celebrated her 104th birthday.
Ena Mitchell, who was born in 1918, enjoyed a party with fellow residents from her floor at the Royal Star & Garter in the town on Friday, September 30.
An occupant of the home since 2019, Ena was born in Kingsley, Hampshire just two years after the Royal Star & Garter had been established to care for the severely injured young men returning from the battlegrounds of the First World War.
Ena now lives in the Royal Star & Garter Home in High Wycombe
Ena’s husband Bill, who she married in 1938, was a soldier in the East Yorkshire Regiment.
He was one of the 330,000 troops successfully evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940, and four years later took part in the D-Day landings on June 6.
Ena and her late husband, Bill, during the 1930s
Bill survived the offensive, but later that year, on September 13, the 33-year-old was killed in Belgium by enemy fire.
Their daughter was just two-years-old at the time.
Later, Ena started fighting for the rights of the women who had lost husbands during the war, and joined the War Widows’ Association (WWA).
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One of the many cards Ena got on her birthday
Royal Star & Garter is a charity that provides loving, compassionate care to veterans and their partners living with disability or dementia, and also has Homes in Solihull and Surbiton.
The High Wycombe Home is welcoming new residents. For more information, please go to www.starandgarter.org/hw.
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