LACW Esther Marie Bonde
(1916 - 2004)
Profile
Esther Marie Bonde was one of the Danish volunteers in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She enlisted in late 1941 and ended service as Leading Aircraftwoman. Little is know of her service.
Esther Marie Bonde was born in Koelbjerg Mark near Vissenbjerg on 9 April 1916, the daughter of farmer Jens Clausen Bonde and Valborg Ester Bonde.[1] Bonde lived in Vissenbjerg until the early 1930s at least.[2] At some point she moved to the United Kingdom. Bonde lived in Cheltenham in Gloucestershire at the outbreak of war. She worked as a paid domestic in the Warburg household. Max A. S. Warburg was Danish by birth but was a managing director in a trade association in England at that point.[3]
Bonde volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during the Second World War (2005366).[4] The exact date is not known, but the service number indicate that it was in the second half of 1941.[5] There is no information on her service at this point, but at the end of the war she held the rank of Leading Aircraftwoman.[6]
She married Donald W. Baldock in 1948[7] and lived in the United Kingdom until her death in July 2004.[8]
Endnotes
[1] DNA: Parish register, Vissenbjerg Sogn.
[2] DNA: Census of Denmark 1921, 1925, and 1930.
[3] Ancestry: 1939 Register of England and Wales.
[4] NA: AIR 78/18.
[5] Bonde’s service number is part of a block of numbers (2000000 to 2099999) allotted for WAAF enlistment in May 1941. The next block of numbers (from 2100000) was allotted in August 1942.
[6] Frihedsmuseets database over søfolk og soldater i allieret tjeneste, 1939-45, http://allieret.natmus.dk/person.aspx?84047 (accessed on 28 December 2020).
[7] Ancestry: England & Wales, Civil Registration Marriage Index, 1916-2005.
[8] Ancestry: England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007.