Sue Ryder

According to her autobiography, Child of My Love, Ryder was born on 3 July 1923.

Her Personal File is held at FANY HQ in London and mentions both 1923 and 1924 as her birth year.

Margaret Susan Cheshire, Baroness Ryder of Warsaw, Lady Cheshire, (née Ryder; 3 July 1924 – 2 November 2000), best known as Sue Ryder, was a British volunteer with Special Operations Executive in the Second World War, and a member of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, who afterwards established charitable organisations, notably the Sue Ryder Foundation (now known as simply Sue Ryder).

Margaret Susan Ryder was born in 1924 in Leeds, the daughter of Charles Foster Ryder and Mabel Elizabeth Sims.

Her birth and death certificates both put the date one year later, on 3 July 1924, as does a plaque unveiled in honour of Sue Ryder and Leonard Cheshire in Cavendish Church in Suffolk.

Ryder joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry as a volunteer in January 1942.

In January 1942 she joined the ‘Free FANY’, the section of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry which had not been absorbed into the Auxiliary Territorial Service (FANY-ATS) in 1939.

Free FANY Special Units were voluntary and independent and as such were used by, amongst others, the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Ryder was assigned to the Polish section of the SOE and in 1943 she was posted with the Polish Unit to Tunisia, Algeria and later to Italy.

The Poles had been trained by SOE as parachutists to infiltrate Poland.

In 1945 she returned to the UK and was attached to the Polish Forces in Scotland.

She was discharged in November 1945.

After the war, Ryder volunteered to do relief work in Europe, initially with the Amis Volontaires Français, the Red Cross and the Guide International Service.

Her association with SOE made initial service in Poland difficult but she persevered, much affected by her time spent with various Polish forces.

Official relief organisations had withdrawn by 1952, and Ryder decided to stay on working alone, visiting prisons and hospitals.

In the aftermath of war there were many non-Germans, young men in particular, who were unable to return to their own countries either due to lack of documentation or because their families were all dead.

As a result, some of these young men turned to crime, usually so they could buy food or in some cases, to take revenge on their former captors.

It was these people that Sue Ryder advocated for, calling them her 'Bods'.

She drove all over Germany to visit them in prisons, where she was often not welcomed by the authorities.

At one time there were 1400 'Bods' in prisons, mainly Polish but also from Albania, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Ryder appealed on their behalf for their sentences to be reduced, or for their release, and for many she would be their only visitor.

Some were executed and she would stay to pray with them.

Among those who were released, she managed to repatriate some to Britain.

In 1953 she established her charity, initially the Forgotten Allies Trust, which later became the Sue Ryder Foundation.

Ryder established the first Home in Britain at her mother's house in Cavendish, Suffolk in 1953, having already founded the St Christopher Settlement and St. Christopher Kries in Germany.

These homes and projects were initially for survivors of second world war concentration camps.

The scheme transferred to the UK in 1958 and with the home in Cavendish already full, Ryder leased the south wing of nearby Melford Hall.

Until the 1970s, homes were established in Poland and the countries of the former Yugoslavia.

The local authorities in each country built the foundations of the homes and installed utilities.

Prefabricated buildings and equipment were sent out from the UK and erected by local builders together with UK tradesmen.

Over twenty homes in each country were started in this way, and Ryder would make annual visits to look at sites for new homes and see what other help was needed.

Aware of the difficult conditions in which many of the survivors of the concentration camps continued to live in Poland, Ryder began a Holiday Scheme.

Initially this started in Denmark, and Ryder would drive individuals there from Poland where they would stay with friends.

In 1996 her charity became Sue Ryder Care, changing its name to Sue Ryder in 2011.

This was repeated by The Daily Telegraph in her obituary in November 2000, adding that "Lady Ryder of Warsaw, better known as Sue Ryder, has died aged 77", as well as by the BBC and many other news sources.

Right up until two years before her death in 2000, there were still three prisoners she would visit every December, driving herself across Europe.

Because of her experiences in SOE and the brave people she met, Ryder was determined to establish a 'living memorial' to the millions of people who had died in world war, and to all those who continued to suffer and die because of persecution.

The Cavendish home, also where Sue Ryder and her family lived, continued to provide care for sick and disabled people until 2001.

The family lived at Scarcroft Grange near Leeds; the house now has a blue plaque, installed by Leeds Civic Trust in 2011.

She was educated at Benenden School.