Veteran radiographer who helped set up hospitals during the Burma campaign has died aged 100

Cicely Ball, from Rustington, had signed up to serve as soon as she could, following in her family's footsteps, and as a teenager, she helped set up hospitals in areas where there was nothing.

Son Chris Austen, who lives in Warningcamp, said: "My mum joined the RAF because she thought the uniform look very glamorous. She was 17. She trained as a radiographer, taking x-rays.

"She ended up in the east of India with the Fourteenth Army, under General Slim. The Japanese drove the army out of Burma. They suffered tremendous casualties, and sickness as well.

"The medical facilities just weren't prepared for this number of sick and injured, there were no hospitals. That was her introduction into working life.

"She didn't really talk about it. I don't think it was because she was hiding the horrors of it all. I think she felt her part of it all was so insignificant, it wasn't worth talking about."

Cicely was born in India in 1924, the youngest of 11 children. Her father was a civil servant with the Army, as was his father.

Chris said: "He and his wife were very enlightened and believed in education for all of them. They were all put through higher education, except my mother, as the war interrupted.

"After the war, she took a job as a secretary in Calcutta. She was very smart and quickly became a PA. My earliest memory was when she was PA to the director of a tea company in Darjeeling, when I was five or six.

"Where we lived, there was no access for a car, so they gave her a horse and she would ride to work every day, put me on the horse with her and drop me to school."

They lived next door to Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, the Nepalese mountaineer who was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest with Edmund Hillary as part of the 1953 expedition. Chris said they could see Everest in the distance from their house and he remembers playing with Tenzing and his children.

Cicely was a great organiser and she was heavily involved with Leonard Cheshire's charity work in India.

Chris said: "She was a very smart person. She enjoyed the beauty of nature and she had a great sense of humour. She loved to dance but she also loved classical music. She loved literature and taught me about books from a young age."

Chris and his mum came to England in 1959 for work, when he was seven, while his dad, James Ball, remained working in India. She got a good job at Decca Records and was working long hours for one of the top directors.

Fearing for Chris's safety, as he was often home alone, she eventually sent him away to a convent, where he said the nuns were very caring and they gave him a good education.

It was only after James retired and came to England that the family was finally brought together again, though Chris was 17 by then and soon to join the Navy.

Chris said his mother had always regretted sending him away but he assured her it was not a problem, giving him a good education in a loving environment. He said the only good thing about the Alzheimer’s that affected her towards the end of her life was that she forgot about her guilt.

Cicely moved to Rustington in 1995, after James died, to be near to Chris and his family. She became heavily involved with St Joseph's Catholic Church in Rustington.

Cicely died peacefully at home on April 5. The funeral will be held at Arundel Cathedral on Wednesday, April 30, at 11am. Family flowers only but donations if desired to Alzheimer's Research UK and the Stroke Association c/o H.D. Tribe, 63 Sea Lane Rustington, BN16 2RQ.