A Frome resident, Jane Norris, said she had reason to feel particularly proud when she joined thousands of others who camped out to observe the Queen’s state funeral, as her grandfather had pulled the gun carriage of Queen Victoria in 1902.
Her grandfather, Billie Cole, was a boy sailor serving on HMS Impregnable (then a training establishment) when he pulled the gun carriage. Jane’s mother, Mary Kelley (nee Cole), followed her father into the services, by joining the St John Ambulance of the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) after WW2, serving at Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, and Jane then became the third generation to serve in the Royal Navy becoming a nursing officer with the Queen Alexandra Royal Naval Nursing Service.
Jane said, “Sadly, my grandfather was killed in Frome in 1941 when on air raid patrol duty.
“Good Friday of that year saw incendiaries jettisoned after a bombing mission over Bristol. Badcox and Queen’s Road in Frome were badly damaged, and two lives lost, ARP wardens Ernest Barnes and Billie Cole. The tragic loss after Billie has served, and survived, at sea in WW1 had engrained the family pride all the more for Billie’s contribution to a monarch’s funeral.”
When it was announced that the Queen’s funeral would include her gun carriage being pulled by sailors from the Royal Navy, Jane said she was left in no doubt that she should attend the event in person, to witness what her grandfather had, 121 years earlier, been a part of.
Jane and her husband, dairy farmer Dan Norris, had earlier attended the gun carriage procession of the Queen from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall, and queued and paid respects at the lying in state. Dan then joined Jane again for one night on The Mall.
“Words cannot describe the solemnity, the dignity and the pure magnificence of the final journey of our beloved Queen Elizabeth, who served the nation with steadfast dedication for seventy years,” they said.
Jane summarised her two nights on The Mall, and the crowds she met, before the public address relaying of the service and then the mile long procession, as being, “The saddest yet the best of British, amongst the League of Nations, sharing with all creeds, colour and ages. All drawn to the occasion in silence and respect, and many, many tears. And the sailors pulling and braking the gun carriage? Well, they were making history for their own families to relay with huge pride, one day.”
