On 12 November 2018, 100 years and a day after the Armistice was signed, Anne Ward walked into the British Red Cross charity shop in Brecon, Powys, Mid-Wales, unaware that her life was about to change. “I was looking for a tablecloth for a Christmas party, and the manager brought out a bag of white linens from the back.
“I happily rummaged in the bag of tablecloths and bed sheets. And then I saw something trimmed with lace,” Anne says in the selfpublished book Twelve Secret Voices (Aspect Design, 2021).
‘ I eased it out and unfolded it. It was an arrangement of white square panels, three across and four down. Each was embroidered in its centre with white thread and they in turn were joined with a wide strip of lace.”
She was expecting flowers, baskets of fruit or bonneted figures to adorn the panels. What she saw was an exquisitely embroidered regimental
