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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Eileen Linder on behalf of Gill McDermott, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

I had three weeks at basic training which was not fun really, but they did put us through some very uncomfortable positions. We were taught that officers had 6 buttons on their coats and suits. And all other ranks had 8 buttons. The hats were different. We had to notice that the officers had blue hat badges here and everybody else had very small and unimportant looking ones. We had to learn that we had to salute the officers. And for a while that was very difficult because you were trying to salute almost anybody that came your way. And if by any chance you saluted a Chief Petty Officer, you really got some very funny looks for your troubles. But eventually after three weeks the lists went up and God Bless her little cotton socks, the officer who had originally interviewed me put me in for meteorology and I was sent to the meteorological office at Lee on Solent which was just beside Portsmouth. When I got there I met a girl who had been at the same basic training place as I had been so I had a friend to start with. And she said I will take you along to your cabin now. The cabin turned out to be a very large building, like a hospital ward. The beds were the same colour with blue and white covers with a naval logo in the middle of them. She said - well come on, we have to appear at l200 hours and we tidied ourselves up and off we went, and we were interviewed again and I was delighted to hear that it wasn’t a mistake it was quite true and that I had to appear at the meteorological office which was strangely enough in the middle of a huge airfield. There were sailors sitting on wings of aeroplanes, and sailors whistling tunes that they would have heard on the radio. Of course there was no television in those days. And eventually I got to this place which was a little thatched cottage in the middle of all this megalomania of technicalities . Just as I opened the door a Commander came out of one of the doors and he said — ah you will be Miss Openheim. Well done for being on time, and I was pleased about that. And he got one of the other Wrens to take me through to the room where I would learn what I was going to do, which was to Decode the German meteorological codes coming from behind the Iron Curtain.
My training was a very general training. It was first of all to show how you wore your uniform and how to march. Some people found this very difficult because they were left footed or right footed.
It wasn’t tough really. It was fun in a way. Although we all knew that there was a dreadful end to it in the way of the war, we were all glad to be doing something. Everybody of course everywhere was doing something. But the reason why there were so many Wrens being recruited at that time was that there were no other men. The men were down in the mines. Men were at sea, they were up in the air, they were fighting on the land. And so they brought in more women.

I found it difficult to adjust from civilian life to the discipline of the forces because I had been a spoilt little baby. You see I had been left when my parents were in West Africa I had been left with my grandmother, I was her only grandchild. She really could see no harm in me at all. She was later to find that out. The discipline was a bit tough at first. Some of the Petty Officers were not always the most tactful and certainly some of the Naval other ranks were very rude and their language was not always what we would prefer.

During my initial training there was a point in time when I felt misgivings about having joined the wrens. Well there was this particular thing. A Petty Officer wren rounded us all up on the second day we were there, like a sheepdog with a croaky voice. Now then she said, follow me to stores where Leading Wren will supply each one of you with a bucket, a scrubbing brush and a cloth. Fill the bucket with water from the tap and assemble outside the door. She was waiting outside as we gathered one by one, and she counted us as though there were one or two of us might have elected to stay in the totally uninteresting stores. We were one short so she counted us again and got it right the second time. Follow me! She shouted, as if addressing a large crowd. Slopping water out of our buckets in an effort to keep up with the PO already nicknamed bossy boots by the inevitable joker in the pack we arrived at a long corridor polished like a mirror. Now then, we were told. You will start scrubbing at the far end until you have reached this end. This disgustingly filthy floor has got to be ship shape and Bristol fashion by 1500 hours when it will be inspected by the First Officer. Carry on! And she disappeared through a door. Now in most groups of people there are natural leaders, and three girls at once took charge. Instead of all of us scrubbing the same stretch of floor they divided us into three groups, starting in three different places. We had already been sufficiently brainwashed into thinking that there was little point in complaining about the uselessness of our task, so we got down on our knees and started scrubbing. Because of the common sense arrangement of our three leaders we finished the job with three quarters of an hour to spare. Surprising old bossy boots when she opened the door expecting to see a half completed job done by a gang of new intake layabouts. Right she said, ah since you have time to spare I want you to turn round and do the same thing again the other way round, carry on! A tiny fissile of mutiny was spoke throughout our ranks, sharply hushed by the PO s opening the door again and glaring at us. She reappeared with l0 minutes to spare and instructed us to return our gear to the stores, throwing the water out of the buckets, and assembling outside the door at the double. By this time we were a pretty scruffy looking bunch. Hair array, uniforms soaking and rather steamy, some more than others, due to a tendency to BO. No time to remedy this however as along the corridor, a puffy of various grades of Wrens walked solemnly down towards us lead by a tall elegant officer with 2½ blue rings on her jacket, this would be the First Officer. Then the small blonde who had interviewed me followed by a large beefy individual with lots of strips and other ensignia above the elbow of her jacket and all the hallmarks of a first class char woman and a bit of a bruiser. She was a Chief Petty Officer. The posse now joined by bossy boots walked carefully up the corridor, minutely examining every inch of floor with a skirting board, pointing out the poor workmanship here and there, and suggesting that several patches might be improved at the next day scrubbing period. Naturally, I cannot speak for anyone else, but as for me I recall a feeling of weary helplessness entering my soul. Surely we were not going to have to do it all over again tomorrow. Happily we found out later that the next days intake would get that job. Thank goodness! So we cheered up and went to our cabins to change and then return to the dining hall where we were plied with mountainous quantities of sausages and chips, followed by rice pudding and sweetened tinned milk on top, which we ate as though there was to be no tomorrow.

Next day started at 0900 hours when we presented ourselves to another Petty Officer, this one small and with a curiously better voice which boomed across the parade ground like a regimental sergeant major. But her commands were lost since she ran out of breadth. The lesson on marching was not a success since some girls seemed physically and mentally incapable of marching in time with the rest of the squad. Not apparently knowing their right foot from their left foot. And causing the PO to turn very pink and trip over her own feet. Next we were rounded up to go outside for a lecture on whom and whom not to salute. It seemed that while wrens and leading wrens wore little round hats like sailors, officers, chief petty officers, and petty officers, wore becoming tricorn hats. But the officers wore a hat badge which different from the others. Officers had 8 brass buttons on jackets — I said it the wrong way round the last time, and great coats while everyone else had only 6. So we quickly tried to take onboard these particular differences until the next time we were let loose to walk about the grounds and found that by mistake we had saluted a petty officer, or worse still, a chiefy and got a funny look for our pains.

We laughed about the futility of cleaning the floor so much and we made it such fun that nobody got boot-faced about it. And we knew there was something better coming. I didn’t at that stage know that I was going to the Met station in Lee on Solent, I didn’t have that to cheer me up but I thought there has got to be something better than this.
I didn’t always find it easy to bond friendships. We all admitted there was a certain amount of class feeling at this stage, we were certainly busy sorting ourselves out into us and them. I am sorry to say, but some of us thought we were a great deal grander than others, and were guilty of snobbery. Regional accents were rather frowned upon and how one held ones knife was a matter of some concern to the purest. And I often heard girls say that they would rather be an ordinary wren than a senior officer in either of the other services. However, all I wanted to do was to get on through this elementary stage during which we seemed to be achieving nothing and get on with the job. And the day before we finished our course the notice board was filled with names and where we were to go and the jobs we were to do. To my delight I was to present myself at HMS Daedulus, Lee on Solent, to the meteorological office….whoppee so the Divisional Officer had done her stuff and removed me from the radio mechanic file — good for her.

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