A WIMBORNE woman has become a rare recipient of the Legion d'honneur medal for the part she played in the liberation of France during World War II.

Ivy Trickett, aged 94, shipped out to Normandy after the D-Day landings and followed the forces as they fought towards Paris.

As a Leading Aircraft Woman in the Royal Air Force (RAF), Ivy worked in communications.

She arrived in the beleaguered French capital as the Germans retreated, and was eventually deployed to a key underground communications bunker.

During her presentation, which took place at the Avon View care home in Christchurch, Commandant Francois Jean, the Consul Honoraire de France, told her she was the first woman he'd given a Legion d'honneur to - despite presenting more than 2,000 medals in recent years.

Indeed, only a handful of British women have ever received the Legion d'honneur.

The presentation was attended by friends and family, including Ivy's two great-granddaughters

Ivy's son Michael explained that after reaching the outskirts of Paris in 1944 she was put up in a hotel for two weeks before being reassigned.

"Ivy was then transferred to another hotel in the Champs-Élysées where, apparently, Napoleon and Josephine sometimes stayed. She remembers being bitten by mosquitoes a lot," Michael added.

While Ivy worked at the underground bunker she processed messages back to England, which proved instrumental to the war effort.

Michael said: "One day she went to the local paper shop to get notepaper and was asked if she had cigarettes, so she collected cigarettes from her colleagues.

"She was invited to the home of the lady in the shop and when she and her friends went there they took what they could gather up from the NAAFI and the lady cooked a nice meal with it all.

"This became a regular event. The lady’s daughter was in the Opéra Comique and after a meal they would sing songs from the operas being performed."

Ivy first joined the RAF in 1940 when she was just 17-years-old.

Initially she worked as a waitress in the officers mess, but hated it. Then, in 1943 she applied for the communications role, was accepted and completed six weeks intensive training.

Doncaster-born Ivy was married in 1950, before living in Bournemouth. In the 1970s she worked on cruise ships out of Southampton, before returning to Dorset the following decade.

Until moving into her Christchurch care home two months ago, Ivy lived in Wimborne.

The Legion d'honneur recognises acts of the utmost bravery and has been awarded to many Second World War veterans for the services to France made more than 70 years ago.

On the 70th anniversary of D-Day in 2014 it was announced that all British veterans who fought in the liberation of France in the Second World War and were still alive would be awarded the distinction.