It began, as many good stories do, with a small, almost forgotten act of kindness.

In 1941, in a munitions factory at Chorley in Lancashire, a young woman named Edith Edna Smith, born 7 December 1921, slipped a handwritten note into an ammunition box. At the time, she was living between Argyle Road, Leyland, Lancashire, and her family home at Providence Place, Gilesgate Moor, Durham. She was barely twenty years old.[1]

Edith was one of the thousands of women working at the vast Royal Ordnance Factory Chorley, one of Britain’s largest wartime filling factories, where artillery ammunition, including 3.7-inch anti-aircraft rounds and 25-pounder field gun ammunition, was prepared for shipment across the world, natures that would later be held in New Zealand depots such as Belmont.[2]

Like many of those workers, she added a simple message, “Carry on the good work”, and signed her name and address, never knowing if it would ever be read.[3]

At the time, Britain and its Empire were still fighting largely alone against Nazi Germany. The early years of the war had not gone well. There had been setbacks across Europe, the threat of invasion remained real, and the country had endured sustained bombing during the Blitz. Victory was far from assured.

In that context, such a message was more than a casual gesture. It was a quiet acknowledgement of the risks faced by those at the front, and a way for those working behind the lines to express solidarity. The women filling and packing ammunition were not distant from the war, they were part of it, contributing directly to the means by which it would be fought.

Her note reflected something characteristic of that period, a shared sense of purpose that extended beyond the individual. It was not written for recognition, nor with any expectation of reply, but as a small act of encouragement from one part of the war effort to another.

Seen from today, in a society that often emphasises the individual, the message carries a different weight. It speaks to a time when the collective mattered more than the personal, and when even the smallest contribution was understood as part of something larger.

That box entered the vast machinery of wartime logistics. It moved through the supply chain, sent first to New Zealand, then to Fiji and then returned to New Zealand, part of the expanding system that supported both Pacific operations and home defence.[4]  There it remained.

As the war ended and urgency gave way to accumulation, New Zealand’s ammunition holdings grew into a vast and complex system of depots and magazines. Sites like Belmont, established during the wartime expansion from 1942, became long-term repositories for these stocks.[5] Over time, the problem shifted from shortage to surplus, from supply to storage, accounting, and eventual disposal.

It was into this environment that Joe Bolton, a 20-year-old Ammunition Technician of the Royal New Zealand Army Ordnance Corps (RNZAOC), stepped in the late 1960s.

By 1967, much of the wartime stock had long outlived its original purpose. Clean-ups of ageing ammunition were underway, and it was during one of these that Joe opened the box.

Inside, among the remnants of a war long finished, he found Edith’s note, still legible after twenty-six years. He later noted that several other messages from the Chorley girls had been found among the old ammunition stocks, but Edith’s was the only one that remained clearly legible after more than a quarter of a century.[6]

Rather than discard it, he did something simple, but remarkable.

He wrote back.

By then, Edith had married and was now Edith Mortimer, living at 56 Coronation Avenue, Carville, County Durham, with her husband George William Mortimer. The address she had written in 1941 no longer existed, Providence Place had since been demolished, but the letter still found its way to her. A local postman, drawing on his knowledge of the community, successfully redirected it.

Against all odds, a message sent into the unknown during the Second World War had found its way home.

The story quickly captured attention. It made headlines in New Zealand and Britain, including coverage in the Daily Mirror.[7] What might have been a curiosity became something more enduring.

Joe and Edith began to write to each other.

Across the distance between New Zealand and England, and across the years between wartime youth and post-war adulthood, a genuine friendship developed.

From Ammunition to Innovation

Nearly a decade later, in 1977, the story gained its most human chapter and quietly intersected with a major technological shift in military ordnance.

Joe was in England on a course in Leamington Spa, learning about the then-new “Wheelbarrow” system, a remotely controlled bomb-disposal robot developed by the British Army in the early 1970s. Designed to allow operators to investigate and render safe explosive devices from a distance, it replaced the dangerous “long walk” approach with remote handling and marked a significant advance in explosive ordnance disposal practice.

Joe was among those exposed to this emerging capability at an early stage. His involvement placed him within the small group of practitioners who would go on to help introduce and embed this technology within the New Zealand Army.

A Journey Completed

His visit coincided with the Queen’s Jubilee, giving him a rare opportunity. He took the train north to Durham to visit Edith and her husband, Billy, at their home on Coronation Avenue for the weekend.

Edith, by then in her mid-fifties, was understandably nervous. She knew Joe was an Army officer, and her imagination had filled in the gaps. Would he arrive speaking in a clipped, formal accent, perhaps even dressed like a guardsman in a bearskin? She also knew he was Māori, and, shaped by distance and unfamiliarity, she wasn’t quite sure what to expect.

By Joe’s account, she had taken tranquillisers beforehand to steady her nerves.[8]

When he arrived, those concerns dissolved almost immediately.

They offered him a drink. Joe’s response, that he “could murder a beer”, cut straight through the tension. As he later recalled, the room visibly relaxed.

What followed was not ceremony or formality, but genuine warmth. Edith and Billy, though modest in means, extended generous hospitality and refused to let him pay for anything during his stay.[9]

Edith Mortimer passed away on 9 November 1993, but the note she placed in an ammunition box in 1941, and the connection it created, endured far beyond her lifetime.

The Man Behind the Story

Joe’s actions in replying to Edith’s note reflected something consistent throughout his career.

He served in South Vietnam, was later commissioned, and went on to serve in a range of logistics and ordnance roles within the New Zealand Army, both in New Zealand and overseas.

Joe Bolton passed away in 2020. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn, who has preserved his account of this story along with the original 1967 newspaper clippings.

The Human Trace in the System

What had begun as a pencilled note in 1941 became, decades later, a meeting between two people connected by chance, history, and simple human decency.

Behind every system, every depot, every stockpile, there are people, and sometimes, even in something as impersonal as an ammunition box, they leave behind a trace of themselves that endures.

Notes

[1] “Genealogical records, Edith Edna Smith (later Mortimer),” Ancestry.com family tree data, updated 2026, accessed  https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/164976759/person/312143787481/facts?_gl=1*7uvxqk*_up*MQ..*_ga*Njc4NjAyMzM5LjE3Nzc2MDA2Nzk.*_ga_4QT8FMEX30*czA3OTNhODM0LWQyYzUtNDBlOC1hMjA1LWRmOTM0MTQwMjYxNiRvMSRnMSR0MTc3NzYwMDY3OCRqNjAkbDAkaDA.

[2] “Royal Ordnance Factory Chorley,” WW2DB, updated 2018, accessed  https://ww2db.com/facility/ROF_Chorley.

[3] “Wartime Note is Answered,” Contemporary newspaper report, 1967.

[4] “Dear Edith . . 26 Years Later,” Contemporary newspaper report, 1967.

[5] “Opening the Belmont Magazines,” To the Warrior His Arms, History of the Royal New Zealand Army Ordnance Corps and it predecessors, 2026, accessed 1 May, 2026, https://rnzaoc.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=26311&action=edit.

[6] “Wartime Echo,” Contemporary newspaper report, 1967.

[7] Rupert Morters, “After 26 Years . . A reply to her note,” Daily Mirror, Tuesday July 11, 1967.

[8] “Family Account,” Preserved by Marilyn Bolton, 2026.

[9] “Family Account.”