Wartime codebreaker
Born: January 31, 1918;
Died: March 3, 2017
JANET Portser, who has died aged 99, was a Glasgow girl from St Vincent Street who moved to London as a child, survived some of the worst of the London blitz and for a time was a decoder of Nazi communications for the British government. Her bosses were those of the famous Bletchley Park decoding centre in Buckinghamshire although Janet Mackinnon, as she was then, was based in London.
During the war years, she also worked as an editor for the British weekly newsreel companies, such as Pathé, which kept the nation up to date with what was happening both at home and on the war fronts. That led to a lifelong fascination with film.
Her husband Percival John "Johnnie" Collins, from Woolwich, London, was a pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), based at White Waltham Airfield near Maidenhead, ferrying new or repaired warplanes from the factories to RAF bases. 2nd Officer Collins, 29 at the time, was killed on one such mission during the war when his Hurricane V7001 crashed into a mountain during a snowstorm on January 29, 1942, near Ruabon, North Wales.
Janet Collins was devastated. In 1947, she emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City, where she worked for 32 years as head film librarian at the United Nations headquarters overlooking the city's East river.
She had always intended to return to Scotland but after meeting American book publisher John Portser in 1948 and later marrying him, she would remain in the US for the rest of her life, retiring to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, while insisting on maintaining her British nationality.
Janet Clark MacKinnon was born in Glasgow on January 31, 1918, to James and Mary (née Gill) MacKinnon. Her father was a bookbinder and ardent member of his local Burns club. Her earliest memory was of being isolated for three months in a hospital after suffering from diphtheria.
Her family having moved south when she was a child, she went through the war in their home in Petts Wood, south east London. That home was only a few miles from RAF Biggin Hill, the base most famous for its Battle of Britain sorties in 1940 but still a target for Luftwaffe bombers for the rest of the war. The key Petts Wood railway station was also a regular target and the fact that French resistance leader Charles de Gaulle had lived in Petts Wood, at 41 Birchwood Road, earlier in the war may also have attracted the enemy's attention.
Janet recalled, as a young woman in her twenties, running to the half-buried Anderson shelter in their garden when the air-raid sirens sounded. Then the ground would shake as a nearby anti-aircraft battery close to their street opened up on the enemy bombers. She also recalled that, when there was no warning, her family would hide in a cupboard under the stairs when the bombers swooped low. Returning from her decoding job one day, and hearing Luftwaffe planes bombing, Janet jumped into a stables and found herself trying to calm a terrified horse which was whinnying and kicking out at her. They both survived.
On one bad day - January 20, 1943 - the Sandhurst Road School in nearby Lewisham was hit by a single 1,100lb bomb from a Luftwaffe fighter-bomber, killing 38 schoolchildren and six teachers. On November 19, 1944, a V2 rocket hit the packed Crooked Billet pub in nearby Bickley, killing 27 and injuring dozens more.
As the Blitz intensified, Janet and her family were evacuated to Hove, Sussex, only to face the threat of Nazi V-1 flying bombs, or Doodlebugs, when the family took cover under the dining room table. She recalled counting to 10 when first hearing a Doodlebug engine, having been told that if they did not hit you by the count of 10, they had passed you.
In 1980, John and Janet Portser retired to Yarmouthport on Cape Cod. After his death in 1982, she resumed her passion for oil painting and joined the Cape Cod Art Association. For three decades, she was also a volunteer nurse in the emergency and intensive care units of Cape Cod hospital.
"Nothing gave her more pleasure than tucking a pillow under a patient's head," her daughter Mary told The Herald. To reflect her love of Scotland, Britain and her adopted US, her ashes were scattered in the Atlantic.
Janet Portser died in a nursing home in Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Her second husband John died in 1982 and her son Philip also predeceased her. She is survived by her daughter Mary and extended family.
PHIL DAVISON
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