Of course, since September 1990, a situation we only dreamed of has come to pass and all girls joining since that date have been available for sea service, along with those already serving who volunteered for this exciting new aspect of life in the WRNS, consigning to history our former motto - ‘Never At Sea’! Those of you have persevered with the earlier part of my story will have read how we treasured our rare chances to spend just one day at sea in a Naval vessel. To be drafted to a warship and serve a full draft as part of her ship’s company is an exciting and enviable facet of life which I am sure our present-day successors appreciate. I only hope they do not forget that it is a comparatively recently acquired privilege which their predecessors would have sacrificed their proverbial eye-teeth to share. However, I have once more digressed and must drag my readers kicking and screaming back to Spring 1970 when I was updating my experience of Service life.

  Having been greatly helped by the information provided during my call on Superintendent Talbot, I had now to contain my impatience until the following Tuesday when I was to arrive at 1100. The day was gloriously sunny though very cold, and I went to Soberton by bus during the forenoon. At the door of Soberton Towers I was greeted by the Quarters Officer, Second Officer H N Scriven; just as I arrived, First Officer Reynolds drove herself up the drive, having travelled over from MERCURY to carry out her Tuesday rounds.

  The two WRNS officers and I were served coffee in the Quarters Office by Petty Officer Wren Cook K M Short and then I was invited to accompany them on rounds, for which we were joined by Petty Officer Wren Quarters Assistant C L A Westplate-Maclean.

  In the hall the ship’s bell shone as brightly as ever, though First Officer told me it was no longer rung to warn trainees of the imminent departure of MERCURY transport, and each individual was responsible for getting herself there on time without any reminder. I wonder how well we would have coped with this in 1956, for I had clear memories of the bell daily setting off an almighty clatter down the uncarpeted stairs by those who had misjudged the time, but no doubt we would have managed as well as our successors obviously did. A new innovation in the hall was a bicycle rack containing machines provided from Service funds. I could well understand how useful these would be to girls in Quarters, bearing in mind that buses were few and far between.

  On the Wren trainees’ mess-deck the long tables of our day had been replaced by small ones, each seating four, while the walls had been brightened with wallpaper murals. The trainees’ recreation room with rows of chairs facing the television screen was much as I remembered it, and we also looked into the galley and the ironing room. I met the Quarters cat, Sinbad, who at eight years of age had joined since I left.

  Out in the yard the dhobey room was much improved with spin driers and modern sinks, while the yard itself was still criss-crossed with clothes lines; as ever, in readiness for rounds, these were bare of pegs or garments. Upstairs we looked in at the bathrooms and ablutions, which hadn’t changed, and at the hairdressing room which now boasted two modern salon-type hairdryers in place of our single temperamental appliance. Unfortunately Invincible was now a ship’s company cabin and was not due for rounds that week so had not been prepared and we couldn’t go in, but I was told by Second Officer Scriven that the more superstitious trainees still claimed Clarissa patrolled the cabin from time to time. We went into some trainees’ cabins, in one or two of which double bunks had been installed to cope with the numbers of occupants. It was intriguing to see the proliferation of woolly toys on pillows and ‘pop’ posters on the walls. Obviously the authorities were now more understanding of the trainees’ desire to make cabins more homely; I cannot imagine the Quarters Chiefs, let alone the WRNS officers, smiling on such decorations in the late fifties!

  First and Second Officers now had other business to attend to, so I was invited to sit in the Petty Officers’ Mess until lunchtime. I would have my meal with the two Petty Officers and then go into MERCURY with First Officer. The Quarters P/O brought me all the daily papers and I had a comfortable read for an hour or so. The Mess was a cheerful room, well endowed with snug armchairs and settees, and the elegant polished table in the window was already set for our lunch. Whenever her duties allowed, P/O Westplate-Maclean popped in for a chat; she told me she had thoroughly enjoyed her time in the Wrens but that she would soon be going outside as her husband was coming home from abroad. She was a charming Scottish girl who, as First Officer told me later, was married to a Dutch sailor and would live in Holland after leaving the Service.

  Our lunch arrived and was set out on hotplates in the Mess. P/O Wren Cook Short now joined us and we sat down to enjoy her handiwork of soup, fish and vegetables, chocolate pudding and custard, washed down with large cups of tea. Although she was too modest to tell me herself, I learned later from First Officer that Kathy Short had recently acquitted herself extremely well in a large cookery contest in London, where teams from Service establishments competed against teams from civilian hotels.

  Over the meal, the two girls told me about service life from a Petty Officer’s angle. Both agreed that discipline was growing less rigid, in spite of the fact that it was now possible to join the WRNS straight from school. They said the trainees, although more self-possessed than their predecessors, tended in some cases to be less self-sufficient. Workship routines caused more pain and grief than they did in my day, probably because manual scrubbing and polishing, and dhobeying by hand, could be completely new arts to the modern teenager, brought up in a home where fitted carpets, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and spin dryers were the norm.

  Even in my day I could remember that - although my generation were perhaps more accustomed to household tasks carried out without ultra modern appliances - there were still some who considered workship to be beneath their dignity. Having joined as Writers, Communicators, Radar Plotters and such-like, they could not at first see the necessity during Parts I and II training to scrub and polish floors, clean baths and toilets, and wash up after meals. However, when the practice was recognised as part of the general levelling-up process they were usually able to accept it. It proved the theory that everyone in the Service was necessary to the Service, that no category was made up of ‘chosen ones’ and that, whether our later jobs were to embrace the skills of teleprinting, cooking, calculating pay, mending aircraft or serving meals we had all, during training, worked ship and started at the same level. And we were all necessary to the smooth running of naval life.

  Passing on to lighter subjects I mentioned the ghostly walker in Invincible, and both girls said that strange sounds could still be heard around the house; this made it particularly eerie at weekends when a number of people were sleeping out and there were fewer occupants. I had already noticed that Soberton Towers was unusually quiet compared with my memories for, of course, all the trainees were away at MERCURY and the only people in residence were the Quarters staff.

  The P/Os agreed the bicycles in the hall were a boon for, during the day, they felt particularly isolated in Quarters and MERCURY might well have been situated in Timbuctoo, so far away did Soberton feel from a naval environment. The distance between the Signal School and Quarters is not great, but even so the Quarters Assistant still had to ring the Officer-of-the-Watch at MERCURY each forenoon to ascertain the weather and ensure trainees were properly dressed. She told me of her astonishment some days before when she rang from a dry and sunny Soberton to be told by a lugubrious Officer-of-the-Watch that rig of the day was greatcoats as it was snowing heavily at Leydene!

  First Officer Reynolds had already told me that Soberton Towers would soon cease to function as the MERCURY Wren trainees’ Quarters; a fine new block was being built within the Signal School but it was sad to know that yet another centre of my happy Service life would soon disappear.

  After lunch I said goodbye to the Quarters staff and climbed into First Officer’s car for the journey to Leydene. All through the journey she chatted and I could soon share the Petty Officers’ joint praise of this Unit Officer who was ‘never too busy to take an interest and very easy to talk to about our problems, even the small ones’.

  She told me the officer-in-charge of WRNS training courses, in our day a Second Officer WRNS known as G1, was now a male Canadian Lieutenant Commander who was bringing a number of new theories into being. One of these, an inspiration shared with First Officer Reynolds, was that there was a separate course for Leading Wrens qualifying for Petty Officer. Previously they had taken the same course as Wrens qualifying for Leading Wren, though naturally they had been required to pass at a higher level, but it had been decided more fitting to put them through a course specially designed for the higher rating. In addition, all Wrens of whatever category when seeking advancement would attend leadership courses at HMS ROYAL ARTHUR in Wiltshire alongside the male ratings. ROYAL ARTHUR was the Navy’s leadership school and those who passed its tough courses could well be proud of their achievements. The Duke of Edinburgh served there as an instructor prior to his wedding.

  First Officer’s enthusiasm for the WRNS matched my own. She told me it was her firm belief, repeated to generations of new entries, that no-one has ever served as a Wren without gaining something from the experience and that every girl who leaves the Service is better for having joined, for however short a period.

  The journey passed very quickly and soon we turned into MERCURY which at first was quite unrecognisable owing to the amount of building work going on. New blocks were growing in every direction and the place was full of bulldozers and scaffolding.

  Outside the Wrens regulating office I met Third Officer M Mackenzie who, as WRNS Administrative Officer, acted as First Officer’s assistant. She was serving her last week at MERCURY before going on leave and appointment to HMS DRAKE at Plymouth. She was looking forward to this as, despite her name, she hailed from the West Country. I was also introduced to Chief Wren Radio Supervisor Pam Ayling who, as First Officer had foretold, I found incredibly young to be a Chief. She was a vivacious blonde, married and living ashore with her husband near MERCURY. We left the WRNS officers for the time being and made our way to North Camp to visit some trainees in their classrooms.

  Pam Ayling said I would find a number of changes in training methods, not the least being the videomatic typing instruction I would see later. She told me the Wren Radio Operators now trained for twelve weeks at MERCURY and the Radio Operators (Morse) for twenty-six weeks. There was no longer a fortnight at Culdrose and trainees left MERCURY to travel direct to their first drafts. Cryptography was not studied in such detail as in our time, just bare essentials of one or two systems being taught. Great importance was still attached to speed and accuracy on both typewriter and teleprinter and ‘backward’ trainees were obliged to spend part of their dinner hours on speed practice until they reached the necessary standard. Transmission, by morse or teleprinter, was more and more being undertaken by tape relay systems such as we had learned, though the equipment was growing ever more sophisticated.

  We first called on a class of Wren Radio Operators (Morse) who were in the last week of training and eagerly awaited their first drafts. While chatting to one youngster I remarked that I had been here fourteen years before and, from the general hush which occurred, I could feel them thinking ‘This poor old soul joined up when we were four years old!’

  Next we went into a videotape classroom and had a look at this new system of typing instruction. It was fascinating but to me reeked a little of brainwashing and I’m sure we would have hated it, much preferring to plod through typing manuals with ‘Gilbert’ playing records for us. However, I was assured by everyone that this method produced very good results indeed.

  Trainees no longer had a solid period of typing at the beginning of the course but took the typing as it came, in between sessions on other subjects.

  The trainees - I almost said ‘victims’ - sat at typewriters facing a screen at the front of the classroom. The typewriter keys were blanked out, as ours had been, and the screen showed a typewriter keyboard. A tape was then switched on and a voice began to recite ‘a s d f’ while a dancing light behind the screen stopped over each letter as it was said. Simultaneously with the light and the voice, the trainee tapped the appropriate key.

  Having mastered the keyboard layout, they were ready to build up their speed. This was done by means of headphones through which they could still hear a voice reciting the letters but on which they could vary the reception speed to match individual abilities.

  Our next port of call was the instructors room where Pam and I were revived by huge cups of tea and lively conversations with those instructors who were free of classes; then we went to meet the Press, who had been invited to attend my day out. The promising weather of the forenoon had given way to frequent snow showers but we still had glimpses of the sun. The Press representatives were a reporter and a photographer from the Petersfield Post who between them produced a marvellous write-up and photograph which appeared in the following week’s edition. Several of their photographs illustrate this chapter, the first being the one which appeared in the paper, showing me sitting at a typewriter learning to type the videomatic way with Pam Ayling looking over my shoulder and two very presentable Wren trainees sitting alongside and typing far more competently than I could.

  Next we made our way down from North Camp to Mountbatten Block where we met up once more with First Officer Reynolds, having been joined meantime by Lieutenant W J Burling, who worked with the First Lieutenant and acted as MERCURY’s press officer. He told me he had married a former Signals Wren.

  First Officer suggested that Lord Mountbatten - as the inspiration behind it all - should feature somewhere in the photographs so we stood outside the doorway beneath the plain lettering MOUNTBATTEN BLOCK. This was the first snag, as the lettering was too high to be featured in a close-up. So, through another snow shower, we walked round the block to the foundation stone which Lord Louis had laid - its lettering was not clear enough to come out, into the block where we found a photograph over a staircase - again too high. Finally, over the other staircase, a large signed photograph was judged to be exactly right and the photographer produced a really good study of me grinning inanely up towards the picture! One more photograph was taken, of First Officer and myself outside the new WRNS accommodation block, still shrouded in scaffolding but with promise of being very imposing when completed, commanding a superb view over the Downs.

  Next port of call was the office of the Editor of the Communicator - Lieutenant Commander J H Ellis, a retired officer. He was able to give me some very useful photographs and I had the chance to thank him for his kindness in setting in train plans for my glorious day out as VIP.

  Finally we went to the First Lieutenant’s office and met ‘Jimmy the One’ - Lieutenant Commander J G Lucas. Here Lieutenant Burling provided me with even more photographs and a copy of the booklet then given to all those joining the establishment. It contained masses of useful information about day-to-day routines and a map of MERCURY; with such a guide it would be hard to put a foot wrong and I know we would have been glad of it in 1956. The day was over all too quickly and, after a swift visit to First Officer Reynolds to thank her I was escorted to the Portsmouth bus by Third Officer Mackenzie.

  Thanks to Superintendent Talbot I was able to visit the office of the Director WRNS at Whitehall where I met two of her staff, Chief Officer D E Talma and First Officer N Thompson - whom I had known in Malta when she was a Third Officer. They gave me even more photographs and I was able to browse through a fascinating WRNS scrapbook with its earlies entries dating from the First World War.

  The necessary permission was later obtained to publish the photographs I had collected from MERCURY and from DWRNS, which were stamped ‘Crown Copyright’.

  And so time has passed on and life in the Service continues to change from the happy days of the late ‘fifties which we enjoyed. As I write this, in the early years of the new century, women have been absorbed into the Royal Navy and the proud title Women’s Royal Naval Service has passed into history, although our ex-service organisation is still the Association of Wrens. Ranks and tasks are now ‘unisex’ for both ratings and officers, with all officers’ sleeve braid being gold, and all ratings’ sleeve badges being red or gold The greatest change of all, recorded earlier in this chapter, is that women serve at sea. Different in so many ways from life as we knew it, and yet I’m sure the fundamental motivation to join the Service has not altered.

  I hope this last chapter has paid due acknowledgement to all those who helped and encouraged me to write the book. My literary agent was not, however, able to find a publisher so I have contented myself with preparing it for a limited circulation among those people who may discover a passing interest in it. Some of them may find it revives their own memories of Service life. Others may think it too detailed a record of life nearly fifty years ago for girls who followed the then recruiting slogan to ‘ Serve with the Royal Navy - in the WRNS’.

  It cannot be denied that the cruel murder of Lord Mountbatten in 1979 was a blow which took much of the incentive out of having the book published - but nevertheless I must repeat my words from the preface that his own story, so diametrically different and yet linked through the common thread of naval communications, gave me the idea of setting down my experiences. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea - but I have enjoyed doing it and all I ask is that someone who reads it may find a scrap of interest.

Photo album