London - As a motorcycle courier in World War 2, she kept calm and carried on as German bombs rained down on London.
So when confronted by yobs trying to knock her off a mobility scooter, Mary Smith was undaunted.
The 100-year-old great-grandmother, who is deaf and partially sighted, shouted at them to leave her alone before driving at the youths to make her escape.
The gang of three or four boys, aged around 10, had approached Smith from a nearby illegal traveller camp as she was out with her Jack Russell terrier, Xena, and a friend’s Yorkshire terrier, called Rosie, near her home in Rugby, Warwickshire.
She said: “They grabbed my hands and there was a boy at the back hanging on to my head rest, but I swung round and knocked him off.
“They started trying to look in my bag but I told them to get off and I put both arm rests down so they couldn’t get me off the scooter. But I couldn’t go until Rosie was back so I called her and she hopped back on to the scooter and then I just went, full power, and the boys went flying.”
“Back in the war I was based in London and there were bombs dropping all over the place and that didn’t bother me, so this was nothing.
On Monday, Smith’s daughter Rita Doggrell told of her anger at the “lack of respect” shown to her mother in the incident on November 27.
Doggrell, 77, said: “Mum suffers quite badly with blindness and loss of hearing.”
She said the family did not report the incident to the police because there were no witnesses.
Smith added: “I don’t think I was brave in the park, I just wasn’t going to let them drive my scooter.”
Daily Mail