Draft:Beatrice Viola Fergusson

Beatrice Viola Fergusson was born in Dornock, Scotland on 16th October 1917. She was the middle child of three children. Her father, Hugh Boscawen Fergusson, was descended from the Fergussons of Ayrshire, and her mother, Viola Duchesney, was born in Canada.

Family
Her older brother Charles Boscawen (Bosco) was born in 1915 and became a Major in REME Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during World War Two. A letter to his sister Beatrice describes that he was one of the first army contingents to enter Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and talks about having to bury 7,000 corpses in one day.



Her younger sister Frances joined the WAAF in 1939, trained as a code and cypher officer and worked at a number of RAF Coastal Command stations, which were linked to Bletchley Park, both in the UK and in Algiers. Her name is commemorated on the Codebreaker’s Wall at Bletchley Park. She married an RAF pilot, who served on Bomber Command throughout the War, but who was killed on a bombing exercise in 1953.

Early life and education
Beatrice and Frances grew up near Bromley in southeast London. Her father, Hugh Fergusson, was a civil engineer who worked nearby at Harveys heavy engineering plant. During World War Two, he designed the bullnose devices, which were used on the front of tanks to clear mines for the D-Day landings.

Between the wars, during the Depression, Hugh was offered a job in Colombia to help build the Pan American Highway. His son Bosco was left at boarding school in Lancashire, but the rest of the family set off for Colombia together with Hugh’s sister Cecelia who would act as governess for Beatrice and Frances.

Cecelia was a watercolorist and linguist. She went to Russia just before the Bolshevik Revolution to visit her fiancé’s family, who were Russian. When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917, Cecelia found herself unable to leave Russia for three years. When the League of Nations managed to arrange her exit from Russia, she smuggled out her diary and published it anonymously in order to protect friends who were still living in Russia. It is entitled From A Russian Diary 1917-1920 by an English Woman. After this she she joined the rest of the family in Colombia.

When the time came for them to leave Colombia, they all undertook an arduous journey across the Andes to Caracas in Venezuela in order to take a ship home to the UK. Beatrice recounts the journey in a journal entitled “Two Schoolgirls Cross The Andes”.



Beatrice, under her Aunt Cecelia’s tuition, became a keen artist and was accepted at the Slade School of Art in 1938. She started her course with relish, but watched the growing signs of war with concern, which would probably account for the little sketchbook which is on show at the Imperial War Museum. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/86334

The War Years
When war broke out in 1939, Beatrice left the Slade and enrolled as an Ensign in the FANY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aid_Nursing_Yeomanry (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) a volunteer force, active in both nursing and intelligence work during the war. Around this time Colonel Buckmaster was setting up the SOE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Operations_Executive (Special Operations Executive) and some of the FANYs were recruited, especially those who had language skills. Beatrice spoke French and Spanish and was now learning Polish and Russian.



At this time, Beatrice was a close friend of Major-General Marian Kukiel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Kukiel and Colonel Szystowski O.B.E. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7944167 At the end of the war, General Kukiel awarded Beatrice the Polish Silver Cross of Merit With Swords, and this was gazetted in the Polish Armed Forces Personnel Orders London 20 February 1948.



Beatrice remained with the Intelligence Department until 1944 and with the FANYs until 1959. She rose to the rank of Captain and was later appointed to their Board. After the war, she became a revered member of the Special Forces Club in Knightsbridge. She was also a member of the Allied Circle, a club for officers from the forces of the allied countries.

Later Life
After the war, Beatrice lived with her parents in Chislehurst, Kent. Her mother died in 1950 and her father in 1953. She sold the family home and bought a short lease flat in Knightsbridge.

At this time, she started her own company, selling high quality reproduction furniture. She built up a portfolio of excellent craftsmen and exported some of the furniture. She was quite an entrepreneur and we were never sure what she would become involved with next. She later bought a derelict church in Cornwall and installed a man who was making globes of the moon. Then she found someone who made reproductions of old guns, tried exporting them but nearly got accused of gun running when it was found that the guns would actually fire.

Beatrice went to Spain for a month in 1998 but during the flight back, she fell over the armrest of her seat and broke her hip. After sometime in Ashford Hospital, she moved to Merlewood Residential Home in Virginia Water but then ended her days at Trembaths Nursing Home in Letchworth, where she could be near to her sister, Frances.