大象传媒

This story has been submitted by Wendy Young for the peoples war website on behalf of Mrs Judith Lansdell MBE.with her permission, she fully understands the sites terms and conditions

I joined the Wrens in 1940 because at that time, one had to pay ones income tax every six months, and living on my own in furnished rooms in London, I'm afraid I spent the money.
I became a cinema operator, now operatormeant telephones to most people and on one occassion, I was posted to an area where they expected me to go on the switchboard, and of course I hadn't the faintest clue where to put the plugs. When I said I didn't know how to do it, thet said "well, you've been instructed, get on with it girl", and girl had to do the best she could, so lots of people got connected to places they didn't really want to speak to. But being a cinema operator I showed instructional films. I was at two gunnery schools, one in Portsmouth and one in Scotland. Instructing men how to take guns apart, and putting them together again, and showing them directional finding for planes.
It was great fun most of the time, but there was also some very sad times, especially when a ship came in damaged with casualties on board. Frequently the Wrens were asked to help and sew the shrouds. Men had to pick up the pieces and we helped as much as we could.
We had some good parties, especially Halloween. Everybody dressing up in fancy dress, and it was difficult to know who was an officer and who wasn't. One one occassion, a particular pirate got vey drunk, we put him outside in the garden to sleep it off, totally unaware that he was our commanding officer. Someone threw a bucket of water over him and said "You know it's time to wake up and get cracking?", and he wasn't best pleased. He culdn't trace us beacuse we had our funny hats and clothes on.
We had fun with dances and get togethers and outings. It seems funny to say we had a lot of fun, but we really did, beacuase we made it for ourselves. But the war went on, rather too long for most of us, and we were very glad when it finished and we could get home again to our loved ones.

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