A FORMER Lyth Valley resident has been awarded a war medal in recognition of her services to her country.

Diana O’Brien, who used to live in Underbarrow, spent the Second World War transmitting coded messages from India to England using Morse code.

Mrs O'Brien (nee Ballantyne) was born in Gloucestershire before moving and growing up in Letchworth.

Now 90-years-old and living in Shrewsbury, she joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry at the age of 17, in May 1944.

She was a wireless operator and learned the specialist skill of Morse code in order to help in the war effort.

After her initial training at Henley-on-Thames and briefly at Bletchley Park, she was posted to Delhi and then Calcutta in India.

She worked as a wireless operator with the Special Operations Executive supporting troops behind enemy lines in Burma, transmitting their coded messages back to England.

She was presented with the War Medal 1939-1945 by the Mayor of Shrewsbury, Cllr Ioan Jones, surrounded by family members.

"She loved it and she was very proud to get it," daughter Fiona Lear said. "Although she thought it was a huge amount of fuss!"

Mrs Lear said that learning Morse code was no mean feat but that her mother still remembers it now.

"She told us she 'zig-zagged' to India because she was in a boat that was dodging torpedoes," Mrs Lear said. "She got to Delhi and in her words she says she 'went over the hill' to Calcutta."

Mrs O'Brien returned to the UK in October 1945 and was demobbed on January 15, 1946.

She moved to the Lake District when she married Michael O’Brien in 1954 and set up home initially in Brigsteer. She then moved to Underbarrow in 1960.

For more than 60 years Mrs O'Brien was a tireless volunteer for a number of local organisations and charities including the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, the Red Cross, Women's Institute, League of Friends at Westmorland County Hospital, Cumbria Health Authority and the Victoria League.

Mrs Lear said that it 'very tough' for her mother to leave the Lake District as she was 'so involved' in the community.

She moved to Shrewsbury in June 2015 and now lives in a residential care home near to her youngest daughter, Julia.