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15 October 2014
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The Listeners: WRNS Listening Postsicon for Recommended story

by marion1921

Contributed by听
marion1921
Article ID:听
A2377749
Contributed on:听
03 March 2004

I was in the WRNS from December 1942 to April 1946,part of the Special Duties Y section who listened to German language broadcasts from small units perched around the south and east coasts. Our job as R/Ts was to search the airwave bands on VHF sets (hence the cliff top locations as our range was only 25 miles); pick up any transmissions from ships (usually minesweepers or E-boats); get the duty wren in the D/F tower to fix the bearing on the signal, write down what we heard verbatim, in longhand, speedily but legibly, on triple message pads, changing the carbons each time we came to the bottom line, and passing the original and the top copy to the duty officer. She telephoned the message to HQ before posting each slip to the proper box. All this time, we were still twiddling the knob with our other hand, moving back and forth between the frequencies to catch question and answer, or command and acknowledgement. If more than two frequencies were in use, a second and sometimes a third operator would come on the spare sets, and another had to keep the search going on the other wavebands. In the summer of 1943 I was at Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast. The traffic on our sets was mainly minesweepers and aircraft.We kept a regular watch on the Hamburg frequency - "achtung! achtung! Elbe-Weser radio!", which often reported aircraft ditching, parachutes and "gummi-boote" (rubber dinghies).

This proved to be the source of my one real personal achievement. I was flicking the knob methodically down the usual search channel early one morning, when I heard the familiar carrier wave and stopped to listen, pencil poised. The voice gave details of a "gummi-boot" down in the North Sea. The bearing was at once phoned through to HQ. A day or so later our First Officer came up to me beaming with a personal message from the Admiral, conveying thanks from the RAF. Our own Air Sea Rescue service had been able to get to the dinghy before the Germans, and snatch the two survivors back to safety.

Later on, stationed between Dover and Folkestone in early 1944, I took part in many E-boat actions, working with a lot of people. There was always a sense of achievement overlaying the grim purpose. In June that year we watched from the cliff top day after day, as the extraordinary concentration of D-Day shipping went down the channel. We were mystified by the huge rectangular blocks, later to be identified as sections of Mulberry harbour. When the flying bombs started, they were visible as they left the French coast and sometimes extremely audible as they fell short or were shot down by gunners on the cliffs on either side of us, like coveys of partridge.

I did many interesting things in the two years before I was demobbed in 1946, but nothing ever equalled or surpassed the thrill of that one airsea rescue.

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Message 1 - Your story edited

Posted on: 03 March 2004 by Helen

Dear Marion

Your story has been edited (article number A2059003) and will appear as a top story of the front page of this site in the near future.

I really enjoyed reading it.

Congratulations and best wishes,

Helen, WW2 Team

Message 2 - Your story edited

Posted on: 27 March 2004 by Peter - WW2 Site Helper

Hi Marion

What a superb contribution! A most unusual story.

Best wishes,

Peter

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This story has been placed in the following categories.

Women's Royal Naval Service Category
Kent Category
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