As with so many other things about war-time life, questions of accommodation and clothing seemed at once both strangely random, yet important, especially to people like Wren Ellen Rose Johnston, born 20th June 1922:
“I was born in Portsmouth, lived here all my life, and was stationed in Portsmouth. I was what they called an Immobile then, so that I went home every night and I had an allowance to live ashore. Well, when I joined in 1941 there wasn’t an awful lot of quarters for the Wrens. So I used to leave Portsmouth and go over on the ferry every day, to Gosport and then go over Haslar toll bridge. We called it, ‘the pneumonia bridge’. It was very, very, high and cold. There was a lot of the girls in Portsmouth who were Immobile and we all used to meet from the ferry before we went round to the base; we used to go in a little cafe and have a cup of tea, and a gossip.
“I wasn’t trained. I was a steward, but I was in the Chief Petty Officers’ Mess and we went straight from the recruiting office, straight to the Mess. I didn’t cook, I just served the meals and then once a week they would give us drill and divisions. Divisions? Once a week, they assembled the whole of the ship’s company and then the Captain comes round and inspects you to make sure that you … the Captain was most particular that our skirts were the right length. He didn’t believe in Wrens showing their knees [laughter] so they - he used to come round with a little ruler and measure so many inches from the ground to the hem of your skirt!
“Oh, I liked wearing the uniform. Oh we really felt something. When I first joined, which was in March 1941, we had the little tiny cloth hats, not the sailor caps, and we spent many, many hours with a kettle, trying to steam the brim into different shapes so that we’d got our own shape. It was frowned on, but still - to make your hat look a little bit different. Your hair didn’t have to touch your collar, and of course, we didn’t want our hair short, so we used to have a scarf and we’d tie it round into a ring then put it on our head, then we would roll the hair round it so you sort of had, like, a halo around your head.”
“No dyed hair in those days?”
“No, oh no, no, No. Regulation stockings were very thick lisle stockings. We only wore them for special parades. We used to have the artificial silk stockings. We didn’t have coupons [for clothing] in the WRNS but we had an allowance. You didn’t have any money but you were allowed to spend so much a year on your clothing, so that if you wanted something big, like a new raincoat, then your shirts and your pants and your stockings went by the way. We used to pull the stockings together with black cotton and hope they didn’t show. You kept one pair of stockings for when you were going ashore, so that they looked quite nice.
“Underwear?”
“We used to get them from the store and we weren’t allowed to wear underslips. We only had to wear black knickers, which we called ‘blackouts,’ and then we had a bra, your shirt and your skirt. Oh, some people wore vests, but I never did. I never wear a vest anyway. The shoes were regulation lace-ups, flat ones and you’d get them from the stores. You wouldn’t be able to get the flat ones ashore. So we had to get the regulation ones.
“Did you miss out on some of the social life, with living out?
“No, occasionally, I worked in the CPOs mess as a steward, which was serving their meals and very often they would have a dance in the drill hall, so we would go to that. And we would pester the Wren officer to allow us to wear civilian clothes to the dance instead of uniform. Short dresses and the shoes; well, you’d just have shoes that you’d borrow from your sisters or anybody else, that you could go around in. Clogs? The wooden-soled shoes? You could dance in those - but then, I think the youngsters now dance in something very similar, don’t they? I met my husband, over at Hornet. We got married 1944. It was very, very difficult to get the wedding dresses then, but I was fortunate that a neighbour’s daughter had got married so she sold me her wedding dress, but they used to be able to get the wedding dresses on loan from lease-lend, sort of thing. The Americans brought a lot of wedding dresses over. But the girls were so friendly then. They helped one another.
“First, when we joined, we couldn’t get used to the collar and tie. But we soon got used to that. Girls didn’t used to wear collars and ties.”
One of the interesting paradoxes about D-Day is that, for such a secret operation, quite a large number of people seem to have known broadly when it would happen. Witness the tale of Wren O. Boskett:
“We did work very, very long hours. In fact, at times the different shifts would over-lap. We would all be together. It was a very hectic time and we were very tense. You knew what you were doing of course; you never talked about it, so otherwise nobody knew really what was going on but you knew there was a lot …You could get a good idea of what was happening. More or less knew everything but the exact date at the time.”
This is also borne out by the experience of Marigold Steel, one of the D-Day Wrens.
Rear Admiral Sir M. Morgan-Giles tells me (based on an article by his late wife, Marigold Steel, originally published in Hampshire Magazine in 1996) that Marigold joined the WRNS in 1943 at the age of 18 and was drafted to Admiral Ramsay’s staff at HMS Dryad, Southwick.
She wrote that, with four other girls, “We had to type all the naval orders for D-Day. Because we, therefore, knew the whole story, we were not allowed to sleep in the WRNS dormitory - in case we talked in our sleep!” Instead, they were billeted in a separate cottage in the village and were guarded by a Royal Marine sergeant, who always carried a rifle. They learned that this Royal Marine, should the enemy mount a parachute raid on the headquarters, had orders to shoot them in case they fell into enemy hands.
“During my time at Southwick,” she wrote, “we were typing endless orders one night in the Middle Watch, when the Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower, came into the office. I had fallen asleep with my head on the typewriter. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Gee, you girls must be tired!’ and he went personally to get us some coffee. No wonder we liked Ike.” General Eisenhower was known as Ike and “I like Ike” was a slogan at the time.
Following D-Day, she was drafted to HMS Mastodon at Exbury, a Combined Operations Headquarters, and was billeted in The Stables at Exbury House. She recalled walking with Commander Stassen, United States Navy, whom she believed was one of the President’s representatives, and with Captain ‘Red’ Ryder, VC. She also recalled that General Smuts once visited the base. “Many strange characters belonging to SOE (Special Operations Executive), mostly Free French,” she adds, “were accommodated at Exbury, waiting to be despatched into occupied France by sea or air. There were small, fast naval craft based in the Beaulieu River for this purpose.”
Some time after leaving Exbury, she was detailed to join a party of WRNS being sent to newly liberated Paris. “The kit issued to us for this included black pants - and a canvas bucket each!” she writes. But, unfortunately the draft to Paris was cancelled, and she was sent back to England.
Some of the WRNS were able to arrange their own drafts by having access to teleprinters in the Operations room. On this basis, she obeyed orders and moved to the Fleet Air Arm station at Ayr, where by chance her husband was stationed. A fortunate posting indeed!
Mrs Evelyn R. Carpmael, née Leeder, was born in 1903. She writes that she was in Hampshire during the war and went from a Pay course at Highgate College to Southsea - HMS Victory III, which was a holding depot, for two days, and then to Lee-on-Solent on 30 July 1943.
“We lived in a lovely house called Seafield Park which I think had been a boys’ private school. It had a most beautiful staircase. I think this was burned down after the war because some years later, I went back and had tea there, but although the area was still used by the Royal Navy, there were only Nissen huts. We walked across fields to Hillhead, where cottages whose gardens went straight on to the beach were used for the Pay office.
“Before the days of computers, all pay was done in ledgers in duplicate. They were called ‘Rough’ and ‘Fair’ ledger. These ledgers were added across and down