“I hadn’t done a job before I went in the Wrens, to be perfectly honest. At Emsworth Hospital, I suppose they paid me my fare or something. I joined the Wrens in May and they gave me the uniform and I took it away and said I was having it made to fit, and come September, I put it on. It was rough naval material, ‘Pusser’s serge’, [Purser’s serge], you know? So I duly put it on and we had a heat wave! They were black cotton stockings, black shoes. As an officer I had brown gloves but I can’t remember what I had when I was a rating. When I was commissioned, I came back to Portsmouth to do my Cypher training and first of all I had to go to Chatham and the tunnel. Cyphering is encyphering words. First of all you put them into groups of figures and then you recypher them, with more, to keep it secret. It was hoped the Germans wouldn’t be able to de-cypher them, you see. They changed the cypher books regularly. I did coding first, as a rating, and when you get a commission then you go on to cypher.
“So I worked in Vernon. It was so nice at first, because, you know, the officers, they didn’t know how to treat us, really, so they used to open doors for us. I was the lowest form of animal life, a messenger, and it seemed … they were charming. I was in the SDO they called it - Signal Distributing Office. These messages came in by telephone, I expect, in those days and they were written down and you had to take them round wherever you had to go, in Vernon. Our Chief Yeoman, who ran the SDO, he was deaf, but he could hear on the telephone, whereas we couldn’t hear, because there was a noise going on in the office, so he could hear with one ear and didn’t bother about the other. I was only a messenger - I didn’t have to learn Morse - mostly I walked but I did have a bicycle. I think it must have been their [the Navy’s] bicycle.”
Pat recalls the day the Free French arrived: “I hopped on this bicycle and off I went - it had no brakes - and I saw this horde of men, you see, and they had sent me to ‘the Commander’, the English commander. So I went up to a nice looking commander and said, ‘Please could you tell me which is the Commander?’ and he said, ‘I am it!’ so I had picked the right one! The French were swarming all over the place. I didn’t take much notice of them …
“And then there was the other occasion when I was delivering the signals and I had to go to the mining shed and … I always go clockwise, so I went to the mining shed first of all, and then I went along to the quay, to deliver something, and I was walking back past the mining shed when there was a very loud bang. Part of a German mine they were taking to pieces to find out how it was made, exploded. If it had been the whole mine I think the whole of Vernon would have gone up, but as it was, it was only a part of it. So I’m afraid they were killed, poor devils, the men who had been doing it. I just left and went back to the office, to get another message to take.
“And when we went into the air raid shelter, which we didn’t do very often, I was known as the Wren with the calm face, because I didn’t show fear or anything. I didn’t really think a lot about it, to be perfectly honest. And I remember walking along the road from Vernon towards the station with, I think the Commander or Captain or something, and there was an air raid on but he didn’t bother much about it Just walked on.”
Similar experiences were shared by Margaret Lilian Wheatley, born 20th October 1919
Margaret joined the Wrens in the summer of 1941.
“I was a Messenger first, in the Wrens. And then I got up-rated to a Writer.” Born in Portsmouth, she was living on Somers Road when war began. “I lived with my mother and sister and grandmother. I was a machinist for a while. I wanted to be a librarian but my mother was on her own and she needed the money really, so I didn’t do what I really wanted. I did get on a little bit better in the Wrens.”
“Was Portsmouth being bombed by then?”
“Oh, yes. Yes. Badly that year, January 10th 1941.”
“Did it affect you personally?”
“It did. Eventually we did get bombed out. We moved more into Southsea.”
She was in Portsmouth when the D-Day landings took place. “I remember people went down to the Guildhall, because that was a focal point in those days. They’ve built all round it now - it was ever such a big space there - any big event, people would go to the Guildhall. I met some relatives when I got there. People just talked of one topic at the time, you know.?”
“Can you describe the day you joined up? What was it like?”
“Oh, there was a place called Bowlands in Southsea - it was a naval nursing home. Which I eventually went to when I had my second child - son. But I went there for training two weeks, then I went to the naval barracks in Queen Street, it was HMS Victory then - it’s HMS Nelson now. I went there and I worked in the mail office for a while. Then I went to drafting office and they had taken over several private houses (I think that belonged to naval officers - they had let them out to the Admiralty) and Woodford’s School, that’s not far off Palmerston Road. And I worked there for quite a while, moved from one house to another, and I was just a Writer ‘G’ which was ‘General’. I wasn’t a typist, you know. I did go to night school for a while but not for very long … That was the Navy, you didn’t have to pay, you could go and learn anything. I started French and didn’t stay long on that. I did it eventually in later life but … oh and typing. I didn’t keep that up.
Welcome news arrives, from home or family!
“I know something I did do while I was in the Wrens. There weren’t many staff on the telephonists - they had a couple of girls and so they taught some of us and we did that for a while and we were all a bit nervous …because it wasn’t our job, you know - but there was a nice Wren, I think she was a PO Wren, she was very patient and she got us all through it. We did all right. She was so patient and nice. If she’d bullied us into it we wouldn’t have done so well, but she was very good.
“I think we used to work [as telephonists] when we were on duty in the evenings. It wasn’t very often. And there was a direct line to the Admiralty and I was a bit nervous - ‘Will it ever go when I’m on duty?’ And it did! I managed to get through that all right. I didn’t deal with it, of course - the senior rating would have dealt with it, whoever was in charge on that duty night. I just had the call and then of course I passed it over to somebody senior …
“I became a Leading Wren. And I was offered to …for the officer course, but by that time I was engaged to my husband and when he became a PO I think the Wren officer in charge of us wanted me to come up as well, but I didn’t because I didn’t think I was qualified enough, really. I thought, ‘Oh dear, I’ll be in charge of people,’ and I was a little bit worried about that. I might have accepted it after, but then I got married in 1943 and there was over a year, I think, and then I became pregnant with my daughter and I left in 1945.”
“Did you have to leave when you were pregnant?”
“Well, yes. I used to get very sick, that was the trouble. I didn’t show. I think you could stay till you were five months, but if you… “
“You wouldn’t be doing any heavy lifting or anything?”
“Oh, no, I used to sit down. But I used to get so sick. So I left then.
“I’ve never met a Wren yet who didn’t like it [being a Wren]. I’ve met some very nice people, very nice. There’s only one that I know that worked where I was, we didn’t work together, either. You always hoped… friendships have been made since leaving the Wrens, with other ex-Wrens because they share the same background.”
This ex Wren Ship’s Cook, born in Portsmouth, prefers not to be named:
“I have lived in Portsmouth all my life, apart from going over to Lee-on-Solent during the war. I would have been called up, I was in private service as a cook but …I didn’t like the other uniforms, that was it. I didn’t like the khaki