THEY are poignant reminders of the forgotten sacrifice of one of the wartime heroines now immortalised as the Aycliffe Angels.

A cloth badge and a little bag once used to hold her wages were virtually all that was left when Edna Thompson, and three of her colleagues, was killed in an explosion nearly 70 years ago.

Along with a pair of her shoes, they were returned to her heartbroken family at Eldon, near Bishop Auckland, following an explosion that rocked the Aycliffe munitions factory.

And now, to keep her memory alive for future generations, they have been presented to Eden Camp, the wartime theme museum near Malton in North Yorkshire, where they are about to go on show.

Edna had worked in a clothes shop before making the switch to Aycliffe’s Royal Ordnance Factory to help the war effort and make more money for her family.

She was one of 17,000 people, mostly women, who worked at the huge plant between 1941 and 1945 to ensure the troops were well-supplied with munitions.

But the work – filling bombs, shells and bullets for the battlefields – was incredibly dangerous and, tragically, fatal accidents were not rare.

Edna’s final moments came after she turned up for the night shift on February 21, 1942.

Aged 30 and single, she was killed instantly in a blast that also claimed the lives of Irene Irvin, 24, Alice Dixon, 22, and Phoebe Morland, a 24-year-old mother-of-two.

Edna’s niece, Betty Cook, was five at the time. “My grandmother was so upset at losing her daughter that she died a couple of years later from a broken heart,” she recalled at her home in Shildon.

She said Edna had taken the job against her parents’ wishes and when offered the chance to work in more high-risk area had not told them about it.

However she wanted the tiny bit of extra cash to help buy clothes for her two brothers and meet the family bills.

She added: “We wanted Edna to be remembered and somewhere to pass her mementoes on, so we thought we would pass them on to Eden Camp.”

Museum archivist Johnny Pye said: “Working at the factory was highly dangerous. The slightest spark could cause an explosion. It is an honour for us to be able to feature the courage of the Aycliffe Angels.”

* The Northern Echo led a three year campaign to honour those who risked their lives on the Home Front, which culminated in the unveiling of a memorial and a national remembrance service attended by the Queen and then-Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2000.