A Swanage woman who survived three childhood bouts of tuberculosis and went on to play an important role in World War Two has marked her centenary with friends and family.
Bunty Turner, who was at the centre of operations for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), and later married a flying ace, turned 100 years old on Friday 29th May 2026 and celebrated the special occasion at the Priory Hotel in Wareham in Dorset.
Bunty’s late husband Ron flew 55 bombing sorties in the RAF and was imprisoned in Stalag Luft III
Disease was a killer
Bunty, the youngest of seven children, was born in Yorkshire, where her neighbour at the time was Amy Johnson who, four years later, would become the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.
Her father, an Aberdonian, had made his fortune from fishing factories which supplied kippers to Loch Fyne, but much of Bunty’s childhood was spent in sanitariums after catching tuberculosis three times.
Before World War Two, the disease was a killer, so Bunty was fortunate to survive, but it meant that she had virtually no formal education and was terribly ill for most of her childhood years.
Landgirls digging for victory on a farm in Yorkshire in the 1940s
“Mice would run up your trouser legs”
Bunty Turner said:
“At 11, my mother decided to take me to Canada for a year for my health – she had brothers and sisters over there. I had a governess who taught me how to ski and that was great, I loved it.
“But shortly after we came back, the war broke out and that was grim, Hull was blitzed night after night after night.
“I never thought I would be in the war, being such a dunce, but we had friends who had a farm and they said it would be good if I did my bit for the war effort by working on the farm.
“I was the youngest there by a long way because all the young chaps had gone off to the front – the older men were very uncouth and the work was hard, picking potatoes and making the haystacks, we had to tie string around the legs of our trousers in case the mice ran up them!”
WAAF bomb plotters at work in the operations room at Uxbridge
“Within a week I had my call up papers”
Bunty added:
“I very quickly got fed up, all my friends had married or gone into the services and I went off to a recruitment centre in Hull without telling my mother.
“At first I was keen on going into the Navy because I quite liked the uniform, but they were short of recruits in the Air Force, so I put my name down for the WAAF.
“My father had left my mother by then and she wanted me to stay at home, but it was no life for me. I had to confess when a buff envelope arrived at home addressed to me, saying they would like me to join subject to a medical, as I’d had to tell them about my TB.
“My mother thought there was no way I would pass a medical, so she signed the letter for me, but I passed easily because working on the farm had done me a lot of good, I had muscles, I was strong and I had my health back, so within a week I had my call up papers!”
Flight Lieutenant Ron Turner’s Lancaster bomber in which he flew many sorties
Slightly bumpy relationship
As a bomb plotter, Bunty was responsible for staying in contact with bombing squadrons over Germany and telling the lead pilot when they were in position to drop bombs – they would then drop flares so that every other plane in the squadron would also know where to hit.
After the war ended, she became an RAF dental nurse in Harley Street, first met her husband, Flight Lieutenant Ron Turner, at an all ranks dance, and despite a slightly bumpy relationship – which Bunty ended after he left her sitting in his car while he danced with a friend’s sister at an officers’ ball – they eventually married in 1947.
Ron was an RAF pilot who had flown 55 operations during the war in Lancaster bombers as the tail gunner, responsible for four machine guns in the unheated and cramped rear turret of the plane.
Tail gunners were responsible for keeping the plane safe from enemy aircraft, but because the rear was the the most vulnerable part of the plane to enemy night fighters, it was considered one of the most perilous roles in Bomber Command.
Ron’s favourite place at Durlston, above Tilly Whim caves, helped him forget the horrors of the war
A bench at Durlston country park was dedicated to Ron Turner following his death in 1990
“German children took his cigarettes”
Bunty Turner said:
“Ron really went through it in the war, poor darling, he was the only survivor of the Lancaster when they were shot down – the pilot was Flight Lieutenant Brian Slade DFC, who had volunteered for flying duties at the age of 16 and was flying Lancasters by 18.
“Brian Slade was killed on the 59th operation out of the 60 he had volunteered to do, when his plane was hit by flak over Berlin on 24th August 1943 and exploded.
“Ron was fortunate that he was already wearing his parachute and a special suit because it was so cold in the tail of the aircraft, facing the enemy. Brian told everyone to get out, but the front of the plane was already on fire.
“The next thing Ron remembered was being on the ground with bullets in him. German children took his cigarettes, but also took him to the hospital to be patched up before being handed over to the Gestapo.”
The story of the great escape was made into a film of the same title starring Steve McQueen
A part of The Great Escape
Although Ron wasn’t tortured, he was kept in a cell on his own for 10 days with the heating turned up very high at night and was questioned constantly, before being thrown into a railway truck and taken to the high security Stalag Luft III POW camp in Poland.
While he was there, he was part of a major breakout plan later immortalised in the film The Great Escape starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough.
The plan was hatched in March 1943, to dig three long tunnels codenamed Tom, Dick and Harry from underneath billet huts out beyond the perimeter fence, with the intention of getting all 200 British prisoners out of the camp, all wearing civilian clothes and some with forged papers and escape equipment.
One was found by the Germans and destroyed, another was abandoned when the camp was extended beyond its escape point, but the third – Harry – very nearly succeeded.
The end of the tunnel known as Harry, showing how close the POWs came to escaping
“They used to bribe the guards”
Bunty Turner said:
“Ron went down into the tunnel, but he got claustrophobic and they were expected to be there for some time, so he became a whistler, a lookout who would warn the diggers if there were guards patrolling in the area, giving them a chance to get out of the tunnel and back into their billets, as if nothing was happening.
“They asked the Germans for seeds and pretended that they wanted a vegetable garden to grow more food for the camp, but really it was to get rid of the soil they had dug out of the tunnel, which they hid inside their trouser legs until they got to the garden plot.
“They used to bribe the guards with cigarettes and sweets from the Red Cross parcels they received, and got two spades in return for the garden – which were actually used in the tunnel.
“The Germans must have been bloody fools, mustn’t they! Excuse my language, but they should have thought something was wrong, the tunnel was eventually 100 yards long and the British would have escaped except that they came out just short of the forest and were spotted climbing out.”
Ron was due to be the 82nd prisoner out, but the German guards foiled the plan after 76 had escaped. Of those, 73 were captured and more than half of them were executed on Hitler’s orders.
The former Old Malthouse School in Langton Matravers, where Ron took up the bursar’s role
Bursar of the Old Malthouse School
The couple moved to Dorset after Ron retired from the RAF in 1975 and moved to Swanage when Ron became bursar of the Old Malthouse School in Langton Matravers.
Wing Commander Ron Turner, DFC, died in 1990 and a bench in his memory is in the grounds of Durlston Country Park, near the couple’s favourite viewpoint overlooking Tilly Whim caves.
The couple’s children Peter, Anthony and Simon and their families joined the celebration for Bunty’s 100th at the Priory Hotel.
Friends of Bunty’s will be holding a birthday party for her in early June 2026 in Corfe Castle, to which they invited King Charles.
He did reply, sending a 100th birthday card but sadly, said he would not be able to come to the party!
Bunty with her friend Joanna Weaver, who will celebrate Bunty’s centenary later in June
