Author CJ Wray on how she found inspiration on a Taxi Charity trip to Normandy...
- 4 hours ago
- 4 min read
When you're a writer, people often ask where you get your ideas from. I’ve found throughout my career that real life is always more exciting than fiction and that inspiration is often lurking where you least expect it. But I would never have imagined, when I met WWII veteran Patricia Davies (nee Owtram) in 2019, what excitements were about to unfold. Or how important the Taxi Charity would be in those adventures.
I had been commissioned to help Pat and her sister, Jean Argles, write their wartime memoirs. Pat and Jean were still at school when war broke out in 1939 but they were determined to ‘do their bit’ and, as soon as they turned 18, they signed up to the women’s services.
Pat became a Wren, listening in to coded transmissions from the German Kriegsmarine as a wireless operator in the ‘Y’ Service. The messages Pat transcribed were often in Enigma Code and were sent straight up the line to ‘Station X’, which we now know as Bletchley Park.
In 2009, the vital contribution of the 'Y' Service to Bletchley Park’s work was recognised with a commemorative gold badge, which Pat wears proudly alongside her Légion d’Honneur.
Jean was a code and cipher officer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, based in Cairo and Southern Italy, decoding messages sent to the Allies by Yugoslav partisans. She once walked General Tito’s dog while he was meeting with Allied top brass in Bari!
Both sisters had to sign the Official Secrets Act to work in military intelligence and, unbelievably, didn’t even tell each other about their wartime roles until the 1970s.
I was fascinated by Pat and Jean’s wartime stories, but spending time with them during the writing of their book, I was even more interested in the women they’d become since 1945.
Post-war, Pat was a reporter for the Daily Mail, then worked in television, producing University Challenge and The Sky At Night. Jean travelled all over the world as a refugee charity worker, before settling back in her home county of Lancashire, where she set up the UK’s first dedicated careers office at the University of Lancaster. Even in their late 90s, as they were when I first met them, the sisters were still vibrant members of their communities.
Working with Pat and Jean, and later Pat’s fellow WWII Wren Christian Lamb, I saw the part that the Taxi Charity played in making sure they were able to continue to have exciting social lives long after they’d given up their cars.
We lost Jean in 2023 but in 2024, I was delighted to be able to join Pat and Christian on a Taxi Charity trip to Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day. From our base in Benouville, we visited Pegasus Bridge and Sword Beach.
At the Pegasus Bridge Museum, we saw original D-Day maps similar to those Christian had annotated during a secondment to the War Office on Whitehall in the run up to the landings.
Later, it was a real honour to watch as hundreds of French children turned out to wave Tricolores and Union flags as Pat and Christian swept up to their school gates in a gleaming London cab driven by the Taxi Charity’s Vice Chairman, Paul Cook. It was a deeply moving moment I shall never forget.
Navigating such a busy Normandy schedule was a breeze with the support of the Taxi Charity. Before I met my veteran friends, I don't think I had fully appreciated the wonder of London's cabs. Their iconic design, which makes them especially accessible for anyone with mobility issues, together with the thoughtful care of the drivers, is so important to making London a city for everyone.
The Taxi Charity is the ultimate expression of that ethos of transport equality. I have seen first-hand how the Taxi Charity helps veterans to participate in the events that remind them their service is appreciated - and what a boost that participation brings, supporting veterans old and young, and letting them know that their stories matter more now than ever before.
Pat, Jean and Christian introduced me to a world of ‘excitements’, as Pat calls any kind of social activity. I knew that when I had finished helping these remarkable women launch their memoirs, Codebreaking Sisters: Our Secret War and Beyond The Sea: A Wren At War, I wanted to write a novel that explored how the Greatest Generation had grown old without growing dull.
That novel was The Excitements, which I published as CJ Wray. It features a pair of elderly British sisters who travel to Paris to be presented with the Légion d’Honneur for their part in the liberation of France. I knew the book would have to have a scene involving a Taxi Charity driver.
There will definitely be a cabbie or two in my next book too, which might just be very loosely based on a cab ride to Normandy. Paul Cook and Dave Hemstead will have to decide for themselves which one of them inspired the hero!
Chrissie Manby, aka CJ Wray
