Many of you reading this page will remember the British Lion stamped onto each and every egg laid by our millions of hens, providing that the egg passed the light see-through test, declaring the egg healthy and fit to eat at the point of sale.  Eggs so marked were controlled by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fish and were therefore sold in shops - no super markets in those days.  In a perverse way, eggs without that "safe to consume" stamp were in fact usually of better quality, because they had come direct from the farm or poultry-keeper and were therefore fresh. In those far off days, hens enjoyed open spaces and factory-farming was not even considered or attempted:  all eggs, lionised or not, were what today we call "free range eggs".  Eggs that were not sold on the market were made in egg powder before they went-off, and every housewife had a tin of the stuff handy in the larder.

At this point, you may be wondering as to why, on a naval website, I am waffling on about eggs?  Whilst Britain had a severe shortage of food [and everything else for that matter] during WW2 including eggs, some nations had an abundance of food [and everything else for that matter] and could afford to throw eggs at buildings.  This was the case in the USA, when eggs were thrown by some Americans to show their disapproval of the British per se, but also of Royal Navy sailors who found themselves on American soil.

During world war 2 [{that is our war of course viz 1939 to 1945 not forgetting the latter part of 1938 and most of 1939 which was called the 'phoney war'} and not the American WW2 which was post Pearl Harbour (December 1941) to 1945] many British warships were repaired in east coast American dockyards/ports.  When large ships, the carrier Illustrious for example, were being repaired the numbers of Royal sailors to be accommodated ashore grew into the thousands, and at one stage in New Jersey [ships being repaired there and across the way in Brooklyn New York] a hotel called the Asbury Park was taken over as a virtual barracks.  This hotel become known  in the R.N., as the stone-wall frigate HMS Asbury. 

At that time, America had established a "British War Relief Society" where a generous nation [Government and people] sent life-saving materials including food to the UK, a gesture of friendship which to my thinking at least, was then and still is today what other European countries envy and what we should treasure as incomparable.  Anyway, the Princeton Branch of the British War Relief Society just down the coast from New Jersey, was set-up and thereafter managed by a young and beautiful lady called Lily Lambert Fleming [but is referred to and best remembered under her second married surname of McCarthy}, who guess what [?] just happened to be a millionairess -- I never met one myself, but I have heard of thousands of other ordinary sailors who have "pulled" similar ladies !  Lily, a married lady [1934] set-up her office at the very outbreak of war in 1939 and in 1940, just as things were getting busy, she was divorced. She dedicated herself to the 'Society' throughout the full war years [1939-1945] and in 1944 she re-married John McCarthy.   On the windows of her Princeton office she proudly stuck the British lion, and this provoked the throwing of eggs and the receipt of poisonous pen letters from a tiny minority of otherwise  pro-British Americans. 

Lily, despite her status as the daughter of a billionaire, her education and social persona, set about being the Admiral, the Captain, 1st Lt, and the Buffer of HMS Asbury [and its extensions] organising the RN sailors into cleaning and maintenance parties in-situ; getting them work on the local farms; getting local organisations to supply Christmas presents for the sailors, and generally being a 'mother hen' to a phalanx of sailors, few of whom I would imagine, were not too displeased about being on American soil far from the German enemy and close to 'nice' things. She was much respected by fellow Americans as well as by all rank and file Britons but especially by jack, the humble Royal sailor, who, I hear tell, never found a better 1st Lieutenant.

Lily was also famously known for her collections and through the artefact she obtained, became a renown world authority on the life and times of Lord Nelson, her hero.  Her collection was enormous and the envy of the world, but of the British Nelson devotees in particular.  It is quite plain that Lily's love of Nelson and his heroic ways spread to a liking of the Royal Navy of her day, and she enjoyed the company of RN'ers.  John McCarthy became the US Ambassador to the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] in Paris, and there in her Paris house, she displayed many pieces of her collection of Nelson.  Evidently, her French dinner guests were well behaved and extremely diplomatic when viewing her mini-collection. 

Lily was appointed an honorary CBE for her war service to Britain, the award being made in the Admiralty Board Room, a place her hero Nelson was familiar with.  Later, she gave most of her collection which had remained in the USA [she had others in Britain] to the Royal Naval Museum in Portsmouth dockyard.  It was so vast that MOD[Navy] decided to send the aircraft carrier Ark Royal to the States to collect it, but Lily stated that Nelson would not have known what a carrier was, so instead, an 'empty' HMS Lowestoft, a frigate, sailed into New York harbour and came back loaded to the gunnels. Lowestoft had been the name of the frigate in which Nelson had served as a young Lieutenant and was diverted from Hong Kong especially to do the pick-up:  such was the respect given to Lily by the British. She also gave the rest of her collection in the USA to the Mariners Museum at Newport News, Virginia, and a wonderful collection of one thousand books to the Portsmouth Central Library [which I myself have seen during my researches].

Lily Lambert McCarthy was a much loved, admired, and respected lady whose generosity of time, of care, of money was manifest.  She had great beauty and charm and was said to have had "a hint of Katharine Hepburn at her most languidly imperious".  Lily died in April 2006 aged 91.  She even found time to be a mother, and left behind three sons and two daughters.