PONSONBY, Mrs Myles (Anne Veronica Theresa nee MAYNARD)

[Richard R]

From the Times of 21 Oct 2023: PONSONBY Anne Veronica (née Maynard) died peacefully on 3rd October 2023, aged 98. Wife of the late Myles, beloved mother of Belinda, Emma and the late John. Devoted mother-in-law, grandmother and great-grandmother. Requiem Mass at St Peter’s Church, Winchester, on Monday 30th October at 11am. In lieu of flowers, donations to [justgiving]….

She was d of Brig Francis Herbert MAYNARD CB DSO MC 1881-1979 and Ethel Elizabeth 1881-1978 d of Edward Charles BATES 1858-94 by his 1883 m reg Q3 Cambs. to Harriet Ann READ c1858-c1945-6. She m 1950 Myles Walter CBE 1924-99 s of Victor Coope PONSONBY 1887-1966 (gs of 2nd Baron DE MAULEY 1815-96) and Gladys Edith 1895-1964 d of Godfrey WALTER c1866-1922 of Basingstoke, Hants by his 1891 m to Edith Elizabeth SMITH c1869-1927, and had a son (AVM John Maurice Maynard PONSONBY RAF 1955-2022) and two daus as above.

[Richard R]

Obit in the Times of 27 Oct 2023. The obit gives her exact date of birth as 23 Dec 1924.

E X T R A C T

Anne Ponsonby obituary

SOE coder and telegraphist in the Second World War whose speed and accuracy were vital to the safety of agents in the field

When Churchill set up the Special Operations Executive (SOE) after the fall of France in 1940, he told its political head, Hugh Dalton, the minister of economic warfare, “Now go and set Europe ablaze.” He had in mind the sabotage and subversion its agents in occupied Europe would wreak, but SOE could not function without speedy and secure communications with those in the field. Anne Maynard, as she was known before marriage, was one of SOE’s speediest (and at 19 one of the youngest) wireless telegraphists, and is believed to have been the first to hear the jubilant messages from the French Resistance on D-Day.

Anne Veronica Theresa Ponsonby was born in Peshawar, India (now Pakistan), in 1924, the youngest of three daughters of Brigadier Francis Herbert Maynard CB, DSO, MC, an officer in the Indian Army, and Ethel (née Bates). Anne had little education until at the age of 12 she was sent to board at New Hall, a convent school in Essex. She did not see her parents again for two years, until they returned to England on her father’s retirement in 1938…

After the war she returned to India to see her sisters, who had both married and had children, and for a while worked for the viceroy during preparations for independence. Returning to England after partition, she joined the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and in 1948 was posted to Egypt, where she met Myles Ponsonby, a former Green Jacket who had just joined the Foreign Office. They married in 1950 and as a diplomat’s wife she lived in Cyprus, Beirut, Indonesia, Nairobi and Rome, and finally, as ambassador’s wife, Ulan Bator in Mongolia. Myles died in 1999. She is survived by two of their three children: Belinda, a former diplomat’s wife, and Emma, who with her husband Bryn Parry (obituary April 12, 2023) founded Help for Heroes.

In 2019 Ponsonby received the Légion d’honneur. Presenting the medal on behalf of the French government, the commandant of the FANY, Philippa Lorimer, said: “I am sure at the time it did not seem that the work you were doing was vital to the liberation of France or the successful outcome of the war, but history tells us otherwise.”

Anne Ponsonby, SOE coder and telegraphist, was born on December 23, 1924. She died on October 3, 2023, aged 98

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/anne-ponsonby-obituary-sj9q7cx29