On 11 August, 2025, Phyllis White will be 100 years old. She said she wanted to “survive the queen” and she did it!
Most of our WWII veterans rest in cemeteries. Lots of cemeteries… many in foreign lands. Some are named on a simple headstone including a Cross or star of David. Some have no name or symbol, just the inscription, “Here rests in honored glory, an American soldier known but to God”. Tom Brokaw called them “Our Greatest Generation”.
This article is about one of our local heroes. Phyllis White served in the British Army in WWII. The women’s branch of the Army was then called the Auxiliary Territorial Service, just referred to as the ATS.
In 1941, she increased her age by two years to join the war effort. The ATS assigned her the duty of spotting aircraft coming across the English Channel. Her job was to mechanically calculate the altitude of the approaching Germans. That information was relayed to the anti-aircraft gunners and the RAF fighter bases. None of her comrades are left alive to dispute her claim to have played a part in the shooting down of numerous German airplanes. She has outlived them all! Phyllis is proud of her part in defending Britain and says she’d do it again if she could!
Some years after the war was won, Phyllis decided to move to “the colonies” and start a new life among the Americans. She found a variety of jobs from building Timex watches to an administrative job with a state newspaper. She loved her adoptive state of Arkansas and her little house and three acres in Hempstead County, though she was never a fan of Bill and Hillary Clinton. She was and is a staunch Republican. In 2010 she gave up her independent life to be near family in Montana. She lived very happily at the Portage Apartments Senior Housing in Great Falls until her health forced her move to Benefis-Eastview Nursing home a few years ago. If you would like to help her celebrate this momentous occasion, send a card.
Phyllis White
Benefis-Eastview, Room 107
2621 15th Ave South
Great Falls, MT, 59405
She is always and forever Proud to be English!
Author: Staff
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