THE death of Colwall's Jean Robertson has broken a link with a terrible ordeal experienced by thousands of women during World War Two.

Mrs Robertson, whose funeral was due to be held in Worcester yesterday (Thursday), spent the bulk of the war in a Japanese camp after the fall of Java, now Indonesia, in 1941.

Her first husband, Henk Teerink, who was Dutch, was also captured and transported to Japan, dying en-route when the ship was sunk under Allied attack.

Mrs Robertson's liberation from the camp brought an immediate meeting with her brother, Tony Leland, whose sad duty was to tell her that her husband had not survived.

Mr Leland's son, Tom, said his aunt's "fighting spirit and determination" had characterised her whole life.

She was born in County Limerick, Ireland, on April 30, 1908, just 20 minutes after her twin Patsy.

Aged nine, she contracted a bone disease, undergoing a pioneering operation to save her left leg but being left with fused bones in her ankle and a partially withered leg.

Despite this, she was a county class player at hockey.

She also played ladies cricket for Colwall, where she struck up a friendship with Connie Haynes, a connection which brought her to Colwall in 1985 to settle down after her travels.

Her travels were extensive. She joined her brother for a holiday in Java, where he was working, in 1939 and met her Dutch husband.

After the Japanese surrender she was kept in camp by Indonesians, who used internees as pawns in the battle for independence.

After the war, she divided her time between England and Holland and met her second husband, an American, Cecil Robertson, who she married in 1963, during a cruise.

She lived in California and took up photography, winning many prizes. Cecil later contracted Parkinson's Disease and she nursed him for a number of years, until his death in 1985.

As her own health deteriorated, she moved from Colwall into Hastings Residential Home in Malvern and later St Cloud Nursing Home in Callow End, where she died on February 19.

"It was her cheerfulness in adversity that so endeared her to those who cared for her and she will be sorely missed," said her nephew.