Written by Todd DePastino
WWII Royal Air Force Veteran and VBC Member Joan Gill just turned 103 years old on June 14!
Joan was born in 1922 in Chatham, England, just 30 miles southeast of London and within earshot of the Royal Naval Dockyards.
By the time the Battle of Britain raged overhead in 1940, Joan was already doing her part. At 18, she volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF), joining thousands of women supporting the Royal Air Force in its stand against Nazi Germany. Joan served in the Signal Corps as a teletypist, handling coded tactical messages she couldn’t fully decipher at the time, but which carried the weight of history. On the night before D-Day, she noted less radio activity than usual—only learning later that the Allied invasion of Europe had begun.
Her service wasn’t limited to a single desk or duty. At one point, Joan was assigned to a farming detail to help gather wheat when a military officer plucked her from the field—not for reprimand, but to pose for a WAAF recruitment photo. She later appeared in a poster saluting the Union Jack under the slogan: “The WAAF Calls You to Service…”
In the midst of war, she met her future husband, Fred Gill of Pittsburgh, a fighter pilot with the U.S. Army Air Corps who flew a P-47 Thunderbolt over Normandy just after D-Day. They married in England in October 1944, and soon after, Joan found herself pregnant with their first child and crossing the Atlantic in a wartime convoy bound for the United States. The ships dodged German U-boats, ferrying wounded soldiers and POWs homeward.
Joan became an American citizen in 1954 on Veterans Day, November 11, cementing her bond with the country she now called home.
Her new life would be defined by love, family, and a deep sense of service. She raised four children with Fred, moving with his aerospace career from Pennsylvania to California, then Canada, and finally settling in Butler County, PA, where Joan lives today.
Please join us in wishing Joan Gill a joyful 103rd birthday! We thank her for her service and her example—and we’re grateful to be able to share her remarkable story.
