A Bermudian who stepped up to serve during the Second World War became a stalwart of the island’s Remembrance Day commemorations.

Driven by a deep sense of duty, Isabell Flood signed up at age 18 for the women’s division of the Royal Canadian Air Force — recalling in a 2015 interview with The Royal Gazette that an officer asked her reasons for volunteering.

In characteristic style, she responded: “So men might fly.”

It was September 1943 when Mrs Flood and six other Bermudian women joined the cause in Canada.

By then, the war was turning decisively against Nazi Germany and its allies, but she recognised the urgency, recalling: “I was just so interested in helping — I think I was too shy to be nervous.”

Mrs Flood’s contribution was logistical, rather than entailing military action. She saw volunteering as the next step after serving back home with the Brownies and the Girl Guides.

“My mother wished me the best,” she said. “She gave me an American dollar, which I carried with me the whole time until I got back here.

“They all thought it was wonderful and wished me luck.”

A seaplane took the volunteers to New York. They continued on to basic training in Canada, and she ended up sent to Ontario, where she worked in the estates division with the grim task of documenting the deaths of fallen soldiers.

“Hundreds were dying daily, and we were typing up the names of the men who were dying overseas,” Mrs Flood said. “It was very hard, because there were so many cards you had to fill out and every day you got a new list.

“There were about ten of us typing there, and we saw their suitcases come in. It was very depressing, so they told us not to go out into the warehouse. Just stay in.”

Continuing to mark November 11 in uniform well into her nineties, Mrs Flood said in 2018: “Our uniformed services did very well — and I’m still standing up as well.

“It’s very important that we keep commemorating these events. Like they say, ‘Lest we forget’.”

Although her work kept her far from the front lines, Mrs Flood was witness to many of the wounded recovering in hospital, some of them severely injured.

She said she “loved service” but took a dim view of combat, adding: “I don’t know why we have to have wars, why men have to die. And now women. It’s stupid.”

She spent three years with the Royal Canadian Air Force, then opted to remain in Canada once her war duties were done. She studied secretarial bookkeeping.

Mrs Flood married fellow veteran Arthur Flood, who died in 2013. The couple had two children, Rick and Vanese.

Isabell Marie Flood, a veteran of the Second World War with the Royal Canadian Air Force, was born on August 9, 2025. She died in September 2026, aged 101