大象传媒

I had worked as a mail censor in Belfast, N. Ireland. I then joined the WRNS in 1943 and subsequently received an officer鈥檚 commission. Due to the enormous size of the task, I carried out censorship duties in London, examining mail before the landings took place in France. I was then posted to Ceylon after London. It was the most lovely island. We slept in grass huts and the WRNS officers had their own rooms in the huts. The WRNS also had a mess which the natives set alight to, before I arrived on the island. After this incident, the sailors based there, gathered money to give to the WRNS who were affected, to make up for their loss of clothing and possessions. The aftermath of the mess being burned, meant that that we had to have sailors guarding everywhere. All night long we were in this grass hut and the sailors were walking to and fro outside. We slept under a mesh net which had insects walking over the top of it. I鈥檝e always loved insects, I didn鈥檛 mind them. It was a very interesting posting, we saw Japanese prisoners of war being brought ashore. Again my work was in the censor department, I was reading letters all the time. They were written in various languages, Tamil and Urdu, but we read the English ones. I don鈥檛 think I went on leave while I was based in Ceylon, but several of my friends went up to Cashmere on leave and it is one regret I have that I didn鈥檛 get there. I still think it would have been wonderful to have gone. I was transferred from Trincomalee in Ceylon to Visagapatan, India which is about half way up the east coast of the country between Madras and Calcutta. During our journey it was very hot and we were accompanied by a Naval Escort no matter where we went, this was not the practise for other forces, but the WRNS were always considered special by the Navy and we always had one Naval Officer with us. We went to Visagapatan, again to read the mail where we lived in a largish house, there were about 4 or 5 of us on the camp along with thousands of men who were waiting to go into Burma. It may seem awful, but we had a wonderful time whilst there. We used to take a day or a night off during the fortnight from our entertainments, as we were very much in demand, there were only five of us and there were all these men. We travelled all over the area, it was terribly interesting. When the war in Japan came to an end I was sent to a hospital in Bangalore where the allied sick returned prisoners of war were sent. These prisoners of war were very, very, very sick. We were given the job of finding out what Japanese atrocities had taken place. These poor men had not seen a white woman for years and years and they were not about to tell a young WRN about Japanese atrocities, but we gave them forms to fill in. While we were there Countess Mountbatten came to visit the men in the hospital as she was carrying out a round of hospital visits. I think the nurses were jealous of us, we weren鈥檛 allowed to see Countess Mountbatten, and we were made to go to other wards when the Countess visited a ward. After the war was declared over I was sent back to England in an ambulance train. I was billeted in the Commanding Officers quarters aboard the train and we had two nurses and I think a doctor also accompanied us. We travelled from Bangalore to Visagapatan across India, stopping at Brunei and finishing our journey at Bombay. The Ambulance train was very long and had a great many carriages of very sick servicemen who were taken out of the train at Bombay and placed on the platform and in the morning. To my horror I discovered that I had to walk the full length of the platform to get out of the station and all these men saluted. I was so embarrassed that I saluted back. A Wren Officer never salutes back, it was the wrong thing to do, but I was so confused I did salute. I was a month in Bombay waiting for a ship home which turned out to be a troop ship, where we played Bridge frequently during the journey. It was a much nicer trip on the way home than when we were going out. On that journey we had to go almost to the coast of America to avoid the U Boats. When the European war was declared over, two of us had been asked to dinner with officers of a prisoner of war camp. It was a lovely velvety evening. Initially we weren鈥檛 aware the war had ended but were told during the meal, during which the prisoners of war who were behind a big wire fence, could be heard in the background singing Neapolitan love songs. They weren鈥檛 aware the war had ended and I thought it was so awful they weren鈥檛 told and there they were happily singing love songs. At least the war would soon be over for them also. I was very fortunate having had the opportunity to have seen and done so much during the years of the war. There were a great many WRNS in Ceylon in general, but I was lucky to have been posted to a base where there were only five of us.

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